Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

sea. This and the breadth and immediacy and the sparkling contrasts of colours in the Castlemaine painting suggest that it may indeed have been painted on the spot. It would have been very unusual for a painting of this size to have been painted on the beach, but the strong shadow running across the lower third of the painting suggests the shadows of the bathing huts which then lined fashionable beaches (see the little study, Promenade c.1909, National Gallery of Australia, painted from the walkway slightly above the beach). Fox would have composed the work from such plein air studies, but it is possible that he painted a substantial amount of the work in the partial shelter of a bathing hut. This would have allowed him the privacy, concentration and the ability to respond with immediacy to the sparkle of colours in the brilliant light. If this is so, there is still the question of why Fox should have painted another version of almost identical size. In the absence of any documentary evidence, the only answer is in the painting itself. Although both works are carefully composed, the Queensland Art Gallery's Bathing hour is in subtle ways more formal: the shadow in the lower part of the painting is made much stronger, not only on the sand, but on the mothers dress. The painting is thus divided into three zones: the shadowed foreground, the brilliant golden sand, and the blue sea. Only the body of the mother links all three zones. The little girl is entirely in shadow, although the upper part of her body is silhouetted against the gold. In the Castlemaine painting, the beach is broken into patches of brilliance and shadow, partly through the stippling brushstroke that Fox uses to suggest the hollows of the pebbly beach. It is possible that Fox felt the need to create a more formal work, and that to do so he needed to allow time for meditation in the studio where, as he said, one 'must be a master'. He had hinted at such processes in a letter written in late summer of 1909: I am still very much interested in plein air problems and have been working all this summer on studies for a couple of things I wish to paint in the winter... We have had a wretched summer, no sunlight, most dissapointing [sic], especially when one has sunny motives [sic] on hand.2 But there was evidently enough sun for a few tiny studies and possibly the Castlemaine painting. Beach culture was, at the time, highly artificial, and particularly so in the fashionable resorts on the Channel coast where the work was conceived. Bathing was not yet a popular pastime and, as Fox's paintings show, it was very much the sphere of the upper middle classes — those who could afford holidays, the elegant summer fashions, and the nannies to look after the children. Unlike the oil studies, based on direct observation, Bathing hour is unusual in showing a fashionable mother tending to her child. At most, they might promenade with their elaborately dressed daughters, as one can see in the background of the two paintings. The beach was a place of display, more relaxed certainly than a city promenade, but nevertheless governed by the rituals of polite society — to which this woman and child evidently belonged, ft is almost impossible to imagine that a child, particularly a girl child, would be seen naked on such a fashionable beach. A tiny, directly observed study, The beach at Trouville c.1909 (private collection), does suggest that there could be exceptions, but in this work the child's body is shielded by the body of the nurse, a working-class woman not so bound by the rigid codes of behaviour of the upper classes, while the rather empty beach and chilly light suggest that this was not the fashionable 'bathing hour'.3Nevertheless, this casual glimpse of a private moment may have suggested the idea for the formal painting destined to be shown at the Royal Academy. The sheer formality of Bathing hour indicates that it is not — as in The beach at Trouville — a casual, private moment in which social taboos are momentarily suspended, but a public display of the child's naked body. Beach-huts, or the red-and-white striped beach-tents seen in Promenade, ensured privacy for changing from elaborate clothing to the neck-to-knee bathing costumes, which are being worn by the women and children in the sea in Bathing hour. The sharply demarcated shadow in Bathing hour creates a private space separate from the vibrant, informal life of the beach. It can be seen as a surrogate space for the real privacy of the beach-hut — the only place on the beach where the young girl could be naked. Even this is questionable, for in the upper-class home itself there were taboos on a child's nakedness. All this suggests that we are not looking at a straightforward painting of the joys of the beach, but at something more complex. One can only speculate on why Fox should have painted such a scene. The year before he began painting Bathing hour, he had spent six months in Australia, visiting his family, and delighting in the company of his young nieces and nephews. A photograph of a family picnic on Chelsea beach near Melbourne suggests that the memory of the 'sunny south' may have been an inspiration for visiting the resorts on the Channel coast. The photograph indicates forms of recreation more relaxed than the social rituals of the fashionable French resorts, but for all their informality his nieces are still dressed in long skirts.4 As art historian Ruth Zubans has suggested, there were artistic precedents for the theme of fashionably clothed mother and nude child on the beach, and the tenderness of the mother to the young girl relates to the broader theme of motherhood in Fox's oeuvre which seems to have begun in 1906, after his move to Paris.5Paintings of the intimate relationship between mother (or nurse) and child had long been a favourite subject of the impressionists — male and female — and in the Belle Epoque. Impressionist colour and loose brushwork were appropriated by more formal styles Left E. Phillips Fox Promenade c.1909 Oil on wood panel 26.6x35 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Right Mary Cassatt 1844-1926 Mother and child c.1905 Oil on canvas 92.1 X 73.7cm Chester Dale Collection © 1997 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC 110 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965