The delightful little work on the right is by Ethel Carrick-Fox and is part of the Buda collection. A major retrospective of her works was held 7 Dec 2024 – 27 Apr 2025 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. There are a number of works by her from Castlemaine Art Museum on display, along with many from private collections.
Born in England, Ethel Carrick Fox (1872-1952) studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London, where she was encouraged to paint outdoors and to use close observation. She was a gifted painter and colourist who was among the first to introduce a post-impressionist approach to Australia. In 1901, she met Australian artist E Phillips Fox at an artists’ colony in St Ives, Cornwall. They married in 1905 and over the next decade enjoyed both an artistic and romantic partnership.
Based in Paris as part of an international artists’ community, they travelled throughout Europe, North Africa and Australia in search of ‘exotic’ subjects. While travelling, they often sketched side by side outdoors, producing paintings of the same scene. After her husband’s sudden death in 1915, Carrick Fox continued travelling and painting in Australia, North Africa, India and Europe.
We don’t have any information regarding when this later work was purchased by the Leviny’s. However, there were two exhibitions containing Carrick’s work in Melbourne at about the time the work was likely to have been produced (May 1933: Everyman’s Lending Library, Melbourne and 27 February – 10 March 1934: ‘An Exhibition by Melbourne Painters’, Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne). Possibly one of the Leviny’s visited one of these exhibitions.
