Moustache - STALIN HAD ONE BUT THEN SO DID GANDHI.

Inspired by a paining, that was handed down to me by my mother, we headed to Canberra to visit the National Gallery of Australia. 

I believe it was sometime in the 1940s, my Mum purchased a still life at a second hand shop in Melbourne. 

She paid 5 Shillings for it. 

It was many years later that we discovered the importance of this painting by Ethel Carrick, or as she became known later, Carrick Fox.

Born in Uxbridge, United Kingdom in 1872, she was an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter and spent most of her career in France and then Australia.

In 1905 she married the Australian Impressionist painter, Emanuel Phillips Fox. Hence her name change.

They moved to Australia at the outbreak of WW1.

Emanuel Phillips Fox died of cancer in 1915, after that Ethel spent two decades of travels and painting that took her to the Middle East, South Asia, India and Europe.

During WW2 she spent time in Canberra supporting women’s efforts for national service by painting scenes of the Lady Gowrie Service Club and the Canberra Services Club in Manuka.

Ironically Manuka was where we were staying in Canberra to see the joint exhibition of Ethel Carrick and the Australian Cubist Anne Dangar.

Ethel died in 1952 in Kew, a suburb of Melbourne next door to where I spent my formative years in North Balwyn.

We still have the painting today but its value is unimportant, as there are so many other reasons that make it part of my life.