Between 1887 and 1892 Emanuel Phillips Fox studied and painted in France and England. He spent time at the magical destinations of Etaples and Giverny, as well as St Ives, the open-air painting hub of England. Returning to Australia, in 1893 he took over the lease of Charterisville in Heidelberg, and created a studio in which he taught outdoor painting techniques in the summers. Fox also co-established the Melbourne School of Art, which proved serious competition for the National Gallery of Victoria school over the 1890s. Having taught for nearly a decade, during which his portraits were in demand, Fox left for England in 1901, and lived in Paris from 1905 to 1913. He and his wife Ethel Carrick Fox made many brilliantly-coloured impressionist studies of beaches, striped bathing tents and markets in France and North Africa; of all the work of Australian artists of the period, the Foxs’ paintings look the most French.
