Balmoral Beach painting purchased for $7500 in 1991 set to sell for eye watering price.

By ANNA USHER

A painting of Balmoral Beach purchased for $7500 in 1991 could sell for a record price in Melbourne on Sunday, in an estate sale taking place alongside more than 200 important art works.

Balmoral Beach, Sydney Harbour, is an undated work by Ethel Carrick Fox.

Born in England in 1872, Carrick Fox spent most of her adult life fluctuating between France and Australia, after marrying impressionist artist Emanuel Phillips Fox in 1905.

The oil on canvas, measuring 42 x 57.5cm, is being sold in Gibsons auction, Australian and International Art.

Whether Mosman Art Gallery will purchase the important work, which would pair with its existing Carrick Fox donated by Neil Balnaves AO, remains to be seen.

The pre-sale price estimate is $80,000 – $120,000.

It’s believed the National Gallery of Australia could be another contender for the piece, ahead of its major retrospective exhibition on Carrick Fox, opening in Canberra on December 7.

Balmoral Beach, Sydney Harbour, is part of the George Brugler and Jasmine Cowen Collection, a married couple from Tasmania who amassed an incredible art collection over a lifetime.

“This remarkable collection features a number of works by esteemed Australian artists such as Ethel Carrick Fox, Hilda Rix, Max Meldrum, and Arthur Boyd, alongside a selection of notable European artists,” a spokesperson for Gibsons said.

“It reflects the essence of a true connoisseur of beauty and an art history aficionado, capturing the intersection of two genuinely curious minds.”

Among other notable pictures being sold among are works by Victorian-born painter and teacher Hayward Veal, Victorian-born Herbert Rose who was widely travelled and died of smallpox, Hilda Rix Nicholas whose work is loved today after spending years in the wilderness, Tasmanian-born Archibald Prize winner Jack Carington Smith, the famous Australian impressionist John Peter Russell, Justus Jorgensen who was a founder of the Victorian artists’ colony Montsalvat, and the Russian cubist Serge Férat.

Viewing of the Gibson’s sale takes place in Melbourne from October 24 to 26. The live sale takes place on October 27.

Who was Ethel Carrick Fox?

His wife Ethel Carrick Fox (1872-1952) was born on 7 February 1872 at Uxbridge, Middlesex, daughter of Albert William Carrick, a well-established draper, and his wife Emma, née Filmer.

After education at home she joined the Guildhall School of Music, and later trained with Francis Bate and at the Slade School of Fine Art under Brown and Tonks.

After her husband’s death she remained in Melbourne until 1916, then lived mostly abroad, travelling extensively in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She returned to Australia in 1925, 1933, 1940, 1948 and 1952, arranging exhibitions of their work and painting in several of the cities and along the rivers of northern New South Wales.

Her works are lively and colourful: she painted market scenes, parks and flower gardens, beach and Arab scenes, genre interiors and especially flower pieces. Interesting and urbane, Ethel Carrick Fox possessed a strong and independent personality. She was an Anglican, but in the 1940s joined the Theosophical Society in Sydney. Before her death in a Melbourne hospital on 17 June 1952 she had lived at the Lyceum Club in Melbourne.

• Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.