Works included in this catalogue
Fox after Velazquez The Topers {1893} NGV [PA]
Fox Robert L.Ellery 1896 {1897} NGV [PA]
Fox Sir Frederick Sargood 1897 {1897} SLV [PA]
Fox Landing of Captain Cook 1902 {1902} NGV [PA]
After studying at the National Gallery art school in Melbourne, under G.F.Folingsby, Fox went to Europe in 1887, working in Paris and other French centres, and then at St Ives, Cornwall; he visited Spain in 1891.
Back in Melbourne (1892-1900), he taught with Tucker at Charterisville (see Tucker Maid of all work {1900} NGV [PA]), and painted with considerable freedom in the style of the Australian “Impressionists.” He also received various commissions during this period, mostly formal portraits (e.g. the portraits of Ellery and Sargood listed above).
After returning to England to paint The Landing of Captain Cook (under the idiosyncratic terms of the Gilbee Bequest), Fox lived in England and France, showing regularly at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon. In 1905, he married Ethel Carrick Fox (1872-1952), also a noted painter. During a return visit to Melbourne in 1915, he died of cancer.
The recent NGV exhibition Australian Impressionists in France paid attention to works produced by Fox in France both in 1889 and then again in the 1910s.
Refs.
For Fox, see Zubans, Phillips Fox (1995), a detailed monograph (refer Bibliography for full details); http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fox-emanuel-phillips-6228 (biography by Ruth Zubans; from ADB vol.8, 1981); and AKL 43 (2004), pp.166-67 (entry by Daniel Thomas). See also Taylor Australian Impressionists in France (2013), esp.pp.20-21 and 131ff. (“E.Phillips Fox and the Indian Summer of Impressionism”)