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Details
- Other Titles
- Street scene
(A summer's day) - Date
- circa 1913
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on canvas on masonite board
- Dimensions
- 44.0 x 37.0 cm sight; 63.8 x 55.8 x 6.7 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed l.r. corner, violet oil "CARRICK". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased 2023 with funds provided by the Australian Masterpiece Fund 3 including the following major donors: Antoinette Albert, Atelier, Boyarsky Family Trust, Stephen Buzacott & Kemsley Brennan, Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM & the late Harold Campbell-Pretty, Anne & Andrew Cherry, Sue & Sam Chisholm AM, Professor Maria Craig, Rowena Danziger AM in memory of Ken Coles AM, Davies Family Foundation, Peter & Robyn Flick, Kiera Grant, The Greatorex Fund, Lindy & Robert Henderson, Jonathan & Karen Human, Alexandra Joel & Philip Mason, Carole Lamerton & John Courtney, Robyn Martin-Weber, Lawrence & Sylvia Myers, Vicki Olsson, Guy & Marian Paynter, Elizabeth & Philip Ramsden, Joyce Rowe, Penelope Seidler AM, Denyse Spice, Max & Nola Tegel, Philippa Warner, The WeirAnderson Foundation, Ray Wilson OAM, Women's Art Group and Rob & Jane Woods
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 301.2023
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Ethel Carrick
Works in the collection
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About
'On Circular Quay' is one of Carrick’s finest known paintings and one of her earliest depictions of a Sydney crowd. Rather than the more usual attention to harbour waters for those who painted this subject, Carrick focuses on the urban bustle of Sydney’s commercial centre. Her colours conjure movement with rich pigments of blues, reds, pinks, whites and black serving as the dappled presence of the crowd in the city street. The sweeping rhythm of these abbreviated figurative forms connect to the larger compositional movement of trams, roads and the block patterns of background buildings. The work has an immersive pull to it, with the dotted coloured momentum of figures drawing the eye through the serpentine structure of the streets. 'On Circular Quay' is a joyful chorus of the energy and motion that characterises the modern city.
The English-born Carrick studied at the Slade School in London, but it was her experiences painting outdoors, including at the artist’s colony at St Ives, Cornwall in 1903, that served as her greater training ground. She was inspired by impressionist painters including Monet and Pissarro and turned her attention to painting the fleeting effects of light and colour. As she painted en plein air, the action of the crowd became the primary subject of her work and her paintings – often small sketch-like vignettes of her immediate surrounds – which share certain affinities with the moving images of film that were developing at this time. Carrick’s preference for painting outdoors meant that she increasingly experimented with a freer style. By the 1910s she was using abbreviated forms to suggest the activity of the streets and she intensified her palette to give expression to the light and life around her.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Paintings by Mrs E. Phillips Fox (Miss Ethel Carrick) (1913), Anthony Horderns' Fine Art Gallery, Sydney, 06 Nov 1913–22 Nov 1913
An Australian Perspective: Colonial and Beyond, Christopher Day Gallery, Sydney, Sep 1988 -
E Phillips Fox & Ethel Carrick, Deutscher Fine Art (Melbourne), Malvern, 13 Nov 1997–06 Dec 1997
Art, love and life: Ethel Carrick and E. Phillips Fox, Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, 16 Apr 2011–07 Aug 2011
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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Anthony Horderns' Fine Art Gallery, Exhibition of pictures by Mrs E Phillips Fox (Ethel Carrick), Sydney, 1913. cat.no. 14
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Christopher Day Gallery, An Australian perspective: colonial and beyond, Paddington, Sep 1988, (colour illus.). cat.no. 51, titled '(A summer's day)'
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Leonard Joel, Australian paintings, Melbourne, Nov 1980, 46, 227. cat.no. 286, titled 'Street scene'
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Catherine Nunn, Art, love and life: Ethel Carrick and E Phillips Fox, '"Less slick and not so clever": the materials and techniques of the Foxes', pg.123-138, Brisbane, 2011, 133 (colour illus., detail), 158.
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David Thomas, E Phillips Fox & Ethel Carrick, Melbourne, 1997, 50, 51 (colour illus.). cat.no. 46
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Editor Unknown, The Newsletter: an Australian Paper for Australian People, ‘Rare pictures: E. Phillips Fox’, pg. 5, Sydney, 29 Nov 1913, 5.
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