Harbor Sketch

Milton AVERY
(1893-1965)




Harbor Sketch
1947

Mixed media on paper
20 x 26 inches
signed and dated lower right
Title, dimensions, and Estate inventory # 697B9 on verso by Sally Avery


PROVENANCE:
With D.C. Moore Gallery
Graham Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Long Island

Milton AVERY (1893-1965)
Milton Avery (March 7, 1885 – January 3, 1965) was an American modernist painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He supported himself with factory jobs and lived in obscurity. In 1917 he began working at night in order to paint in the daytime. Roy Neuberger saw his work and thought he deserved recognition. Determined to get the world to know and respect Avery's work, Neuberger bought over 100 of his paintings, starting with Gaspé Landscape, and lent or donated them to museums all over the world. With the work of Milton Avery rotating through high-profile museums, he came to be a highly respected and successful painter.

Avery's work is seminal to American abstract painting—while his work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations and is not concerned with creating the illusion of depth as Western painting since the Renaissance has. Early in his career his work was considered too radical for being too abstract; when Abstract Expressionism became dominant, his work was overlooked as being too representational. He was befriended by Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko among many other artists living in New York City in the 1930's-40's.