The Early Years
John Fox was born in Montreal in 1927, the son of a banker and the youngest of six children. He attended St. Leo’s Academy in Westmount and then entered McGill University in the fall of 1945. This was a confusing time for Fox; the Second World War had just ended and he was still coming to terms with the death of his only brother in combat the previous year. In his youth, Fox was quite reserved and as he put it "rather naïve." During an interview with the author he said "university was a total culture shock." His classes held little interest and he preferred to spend his time in the Student Union and coffee shops discussing politics and current events. By the end of the first semester Fox realized that a Bachelor of Arts’ degree was not the way of his future and he left McGill in the spring of 1946.
Up to this point, Fox had never thought of the fine arts as a profession, since drawing was something he did just for his own amusement. But a friend suggested that he should go to art school. After a summer of private drawing lessons from a local teacher and art critic, René Chicoine, Fox applied to the École des beaux-arts. Classes consisted of drawing from the model in the morning and making small compositions of "autumn leaves in gouache" in the afternoon, which he found intensely boring. Disillusioned, he spoke with Arthur Lismer, the director of the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, who allowed him to attend evening classes while he completed the semester at the École. He then began full-time study at the Museum school. It was also at this point that he learned that his mother had once taken classes there with William Brymner.
The Museum school was a revelation: "it was the first time in my life that I felt really at home. The place, people everything about it. So I spent all my time there – morning, afternoon, evening…. You would be drawing in the morning and if you wanted to walk through the centre doors, you were in the museum; you could look at the Italian drawings on the wall and then go back and do your work. It was fantastic!" The teachers at the time were Eldon Grier, William Armstrong and Goodridge Roberts. Roberts had the greatest influence on Fox. He had seen Roberts’ work at the Dominion Gallery on Sherbrooke Street around 1946: "I think they were the Lake Orford watercolours; I was quite thunderstruck." It was from Roberts that he learned the importance of colour relationships as a means to structure a painting. Roberts, of course, had studied at the Art Students League in New York, where he had been introduced to both American modernism and the School of Paris. Roberts was both mentor and teacher to Fox and most importantly, he "was a role model - he proved that one could live a life totally committed to the making of art." Their relationship soon developed into a friendship that would last until Roberts’ death in 1974. ...
The complete biography will be available as of September 2010.
Copyright © Judith Hayes, MA & Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, 2010
Montreal
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