Carrick’s sense of adventure was unabated in old age. After spending the years from 1939 until 1950 in Australia, her love of travel was still with her and in February 1951 she was in Nice, in the south of France, where she undertook her last paintings of flower markets. The much-loved subject of marketplaces had evolved across decades and continents since her early, spirited post-impressionist paintings. A vegetable market painted by her just after the devastation of the First World War, symbolised the return to peace, while her depictions of the famous Nice flower markets from the 1920s were anchored in time and place, set against precisely articulated architectural backdrops. This later painting Flower market southern France, undertaken when she was 79 years of age, reveals an increased openness and freedom of expression, with women clad in contemporary dress. It was as though Carrick was savouring lessons of a lifetime. As in earlier paintings key touchstones of umbrellas create dynamic rhythms, bunches of flowers add radiant colour, and light and shadow cast abstract patterns on the ground.
In 1952 Carrick made her last visit to Australia. On her arrival in Melbourne in June, she went to stay at the Lyceum Club, where she took ill, dying of a cerebral haemorrhage on the way to hospital a few days later.252 She was eighty years of age. The occupation on Ethel Carrick’s death certificate was noted as ‘home duties’, oblivious to her artistic contribution. Over the years since her death, private collectors have continued to follow her work and in more recent times key paintings have become highly sought-after. Through the generous loans from many private and public collections to this retrospective, and through the accompanying publication, it is hoped that Carrick’s contribution will always be remembered.
