LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 December Signature Fine Art Auction #656  / 

23628

Milton Avery (American 1893-1965), Portrait

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:19,500.00 USD Estimated At:25,000.00 - 35,000.00 USD
Milton Avery (American 1893-1965), Portrait
<B>MILTON AVERY </B></I>(American 1893-1965)<BR><I>Portrait of Sally</B></I>, circa 1939<BR>Gouache on black paper<BR>16-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches (41.9 x 26.7 cm)<BR>Signed lower left: <I>Milton Avery</B></I><BR> <BR>Provenance:<BR>Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Hudson D. Walker<BR>Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, New York<BR>Private collection, Dallas, Texas<BR><BR>Exhibition:<BR>University Gallery, Northrop Memorial Auditorium, University of Minnesota, no. 755, lent by Mr. & Mrs. Hudson D. Walker<BR><BR>This portrait in gouache by Milton Avery of 1939 depicts the artist's wife, Sally Michel, who was a painter in her own right. The two met during a summer trip to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where they were inseparable. Avery followed Michel back to New York City, and the couple married in 1926. <BR><BR>Throughout his life, Avery painted Sally and their daughter, March, in many guises and attitudes. These two women in his life remained a primary subject of his art whether he was working in a more representational mode, such as the present work, or one that came quite close in technique to the Abstract Expressionist work of his friends Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman. Despite his painterliness and his minimalism, Avery, unlike the Abstract Expressionists, never relinquished his subject matter, which was primarily his family and his domestic landscapes and interiors. Avery's sitting room where Sally nursed baby March, the sweep of his grassy backyard down to the sea, Sally sitting beside a still life--these were the types of themes he explored in endless variation, with flat Matisse-like shapes, and unusual juxtapositions of slightly dissonant tinted hues. <BR><BR>In this particular work, Avery is still heavily grounded in representational art. Among other things, in 1939 the artist was still rendering Sally's facial features when he painted her. Over time, her face and those of his other figurative subjects were usually rendered as flat planes without any surface detail. He began forcing the likeness to succeed through outline alone. In the present painting, Avery allows the black paper to show through between the planes of color to form the linear details of Sally's face. Allowing the ground tone to differentiate planes of color evolved into a hallmark of Avery's mature painting. <BR><BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Requires 3rd Party Shipping (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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