E. Phillips Fox 1865 – 1915

The art of Emmanuel Phillips Fox was celebrated in his lifetime for all the qualities we appreciate today: his perception of light, the sensuous textures of his paint, the beauty of his patterning and the clarity of his composition. To Fox the world appeared as a system of interacting and constantly changing colours, a vision developed in Australia and expanded during a career marked by his experience of the art worlds of Europe and Australia.

The exhibition begins with a landscape painted as a student, follows with the paintings from his first trip to Europe, those made around Heidelberg and in Melbourne through the 1890s and the turn of the century, and concludes with the work of his later years in Europe and the final paintings made in Australia before his death in 1915. E. Phillips Fox 1865 – 1915 continues a series of exhibitions by the National Gallery of Victoria that honour past figures in Australian painting, and offers re-assessment of one of the most important, but probably under-regarded, Australian artists working at the turn of the century.

Sourced from: E Phillips Fox, National Gallery of Victoria, 1994