Emanuel Phillips Fox

Catalogue of Pictures and Studies by E. Phillips Fox, Melbourne, 16 December 1892, cat. 30, as 'Landscape between the Counties of Morbihan and Finisterre' [sic]

Ruth Zubans, E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Art, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 41-2 (illus. 15), 215, cat. 9

In France, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the 'naturalist' painting of peasant life was much in vogue, influenced by the work of Jean-François Millet and, particularly among the younger artists, by Jules Bastien-Lepage. In the later 1880s peasant subjects also formed an important part of the work of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. It is therefore not surprising that the young Emanuel Phillips Fox, recently arrived in Paris, should be likewise inclined, an inclination furthered by his adoption of the art student's usual escape from Paris during the summer months to paint outdoors in the northern provinces of Brittany and Normandy. In the summer of 1887 he was sketching at Etaples, a place much favoured later on by his friend and contemporary, Rupert Bunny. Again, in the summer into autumn of 1889, Fox was working at Le Pouldu in Finistère, his particular interest in the subject of peasants detailed in an October letter to his mother: 'I beleive [sic] I would quite enjoy a life half peasant half artist. I have almost a mind to try living with them. To paint them properly one ought to understand them …'. ¹ His paintings of peasants ranged from the freshly worked A Peasant Girl in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, through Sunlight Effect in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and La Religieuse, to Autumn and The Knitter, the three latter works being in private collections. Fox made his successful Paris debut with Autumn, with its old peasant woman in a forest at Finistère, and The Knitter, exhibited in the 1890 Salon de la Société des Artistes Français. The latter was well acknowledged, hung on the line and illustrated in the official catalogue. In Melbourne, the press warmly noted his 'series of triumphs' and 'promise of a brilliant career'.²

The Cabbage Patch belongs to this significant group of paintings from 1889-90. Fox's biographer, Dr Ruth Zubans, singles it out for lengthy comment, noting its broader and more fluent technique. 'Of the surviving works this is the first of Fox's landscapes to convey the freshness of open air, capturing truthfully the cool autumn moisture of this part of Brittany where cultivated land almost touches the sea. The view is wide-angled, encompassing the traditional Breton cabbage patch tended by peasant women and a grazing area screened from the sea by a row of trees'. ³

In The Cabbage Patch, the theme of rural, peasant life is secondary to the landscape, Fox originally having given it the title 'Landscape between the Counties of Morbihan and Finisterre' [sic] when exhibited in his first solo show in Melbourne in 1892. It does, however, continue to explore the relationship between man and nature in a country where, unlike Australia, the handiwork of humanity is always evident within the landscape. Appealing in its naturalism and colour sense, it provides an early and very fine example of Fox's interest in landscapes bathed in sunlight.

1. From Le Pouldu in Brittany, 16 October 1889; quoted in Zubans, R., E. Phillips Fox: His Life and Art, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1995, pp. 32, 177. 
2. Table Talk, 23 January 1891, and Melbourne University Review, 11 July 1891, quoted in Zubans, op. cit., p. 37.
3. Zubans, op. cit., p. 41.