Nasturtiums (E. Phillips Fox)
Nasturtiums | |
---|---|
Miss Edith Anderson, Mrs Penleigh Boyd, Reading in the garden | |
Artist | E. Phillips Fox |
Year | c. 1912 |
Type | oil painting |
Dimensions | 91.5 cm × 71.5 cm (62.4 in × 47.4 in) |
Location | Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
Nasturtiums is an
After being owned by the model's family, the Boyds, since its creation, the painting was purchased in 2011 at auction by the Society of the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a memorial to Margaret Olley, a Sydney painter and longtime patron of the gallery who had died a few months earlier.[2][3] Fox was one of Olley's favourite artists[3] and the museum's curator of Australian art said the painting's "combination of the poetic and the pragmatic, the decorative and the real", reflected Olley's own aesthetic preoccupations".[4][failed verification]
Artist
Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian painter living in Paris at the time that he produced this and several other paintings that depict the artist's wife and friends in the context of Parisian domesticity during the Belle Époque. Fox had married the Australian artist Ethel Carrick in 1905 in London in a ceremony attended by Rupert Bunny, another expatriate Australian artist and friend. The couples lived near to one another in Paris, and the friendship between the artists is regarded as having "beneficial influences" on one another's art.[2]
Model
The model in the painting is Fox's friend
Subject
Nasturtiums is one of a series of paintings of women in gardens that Fox created in 1911–12. Many were painted in-situ in the small central courtyard garden of the Fox studio-apartment on Boulevard Arago in Montparnasse. Although the subject is known and recognisable from other works, the painting's title and the period in which it was painted show that it is an example of how "the borderline between portrait and subject painting was often blurred."[10] At the time, in spite of the fact that portraiture was popular and likeness to the subject valued in the salons, artists were showing a growing interest in the formal aspects of the work and they had begun to name their paintings after their aesthetic elements. Fox has not given the model's name as the title of this work, giving it instead the title of a subject picture, thereby directing the viewer's attention to the setting and his interest in the aesthetic values of that setting.
In spite of these formal and decorative intentions, the painting is one in which "the artist illustrated the elegance of the Belle Époque and the sunny pastimes of the bourgeoisie".
It has been argued that such relaxed poses and settings were regarded as "typically feminine" and that paintings of men reading were different in that men are typically portrayed indoors as "busy, upright, professional, erudite" with serious non-fiction books around them.[12]
Critical assessment
In Zubans' major study of Phillips Fox's work the painting is described as "exquisite" and "enchanting".[15] The Senior Curator of Australian Art at the Gallery described Nasturtiums as "the most significant in a series of women-in-garden paintings which Phillips Fox created over 1911–12"[4]
The dappled light and decorative approach seen in the painting are characteristic of Fox's work, although it is less warm than other similar Fox paintings, such as Sur le Balcon or The Green Parasol.[1] The uncharacteristic "dampening down of atmosphere and light" has been attributed to the weather in Paris at the time – which according to Fox's friend Rupert Bunny was very cold and wet.[2]
Provenance
Nasturtiums was given by the artist to Edith Boyd c1912, then inherited by her son Robin (of Melbourne) in 1961, and by his widow Patricia upon his 1971 death,[16] becoming became part of her estate following her own death in 2008. It came into a public collection for the first time when it was sold at auction by Deutscher and Hackett to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in August 2011 for A$600,000.[2][17]
Exhibited
- 13–28 October 1913: Nasturtiums is listed as #11 in the Catalogue of Pictures by E.Phillips Fox, on sale for 50 Pitt Street.
- 9 November 1994 – 30 January 1995: E. Phillips Fox, 1865–1915, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, cat. 52
- 16 April – 7 August 2011: in Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E. Phillips Fox, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane,
See also
- Boyd Family
- Nasturtiums (1892) by Gustave Caillebotte
References
- ^ a b c d Fox, E Phillips (c. 1912). "Nasturtiums". AGNSW collection record. Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
- ^ a b c d e Thomas, David (2011). "12 Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915): Nasturtiums, c1912". Deutscher and Hackett catalogue. Surry Hills, New South Wales: Deutscher and Hackett. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
- ^ a b AAP (10 November 2011). "Olley honoured with Fox painting". ABC News website. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ a b "Collection Circle". Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ^ Thomas, David (2011). "13 Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915): On the Balcony c1912". Deutscher and Hackett catalogue. Surry Hills, New South Wales: Deutscher and Hackett. Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ^ Connolly, Georgia (2010). "The green parasol c.1912". Canberra, ACT: National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ^ "Society's "Perfect Memorial" to Margaret Olley – Flowers and an artist whose work she loved"". Look (Art Gallery Society of NSW): 15. November 2011.
- ^ Eagle, M (1997). The oil paintings of E. Phillips Fox in the National Gallery. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia. p. 63.cited in Gray 2010
- ^ McDonald, John (1 May 2011). "Spectrum". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- ISBN 0-522-84653-X.
- ^ a b St Georges, Bénédicte Bonnet. "A Painting by Emanuel Phillips Fox Acquired by Sydney". The Art Tribune. Archived from the original on 31 July 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
- ^ ISBN 0-7022-3234-3.
- ^ Ballarat Art Gallery record
- ^ NGV record
- ISBN 0-522-84653-X.
- ^ Boyd, Penleigh (4 January 2010). "Lady of substance recognised for service to opera". The Age. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
- ^ For example, in an AAP [Sydney] report "NSW: Olley honoured with painting by Fox" 10 October 2011
Bibliography
- "Nasturtiums" AGNSW record of work
- Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Deutscher Fine Art Gallery 13 November – 6 December 1997. Deutscher and Hackett, Surry Hills, New South Wales, 1997
- Eagle, Mary. The Oil Paintings of E. Phillips Fox in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997 ISBN 0-642-13086-8
- Fox, Len, E., Phillips Fox and his family, 1985 published by the author ISBN 0-9589239-1-4
- Goddard, A., Art, Love and Life: Ethel Carrick and E. Phillips Fox, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2011, pp. 96, 158 (illus. p. 97)
- Gray, Anne, Face: Australian portraits 1880–1960 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2010 ISBN 978-0-642-33415-2
- Look Art Gallery Society of New South Wales, November 2011 p15
- Lyons, Martyn and John Arnold (eds) Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia v2 1891–1945: a national culture in a colonised market, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2001 ISBN 0-7022-3234-3
- Masters, David, Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915) in Deutscher and Hackett Fine Art Auction Catalogue (Lot 12 Nasturtiums for sale at auction 31 August 2011, Melbourne), Surry Hills, New South Wales, 2011, p36
- McDonald, John, in The Sydney Morning Herald 30 April 2011 – 1 May 2011, "Spectrum" section p. 11
- St Georges, Bénédicte Bonnet The Art Tribune, "A Painting by Emanuel Phillips Fox Acquired by Sydney" 15 December 2011
- Zubans, R., E. Phillips Fox 1865–1915, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1994, cat. 52, p. 66 (illus.) ISBN 0-7241-0171-3
- Zubans, R., E. Phillips Fox, His Life and Art, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 1995, cat. 406, p. 150, pl. C67 (illus.) ISBN 0-522-84653-X