Milton Avery 1885 - 1965

Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1971

Detroit, Michigan, Donald Morris Gallery, Milton Avery, Oil Paintings, the Middle Years, 1941-1949, January-February 1971, no. 11, illustrated
Toronto, Canada, Marianne Friedland Gallery; Ontario, Canada, The Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and four additional Canadian venues, Milton Avery: Paintings of Canada, February 1986-March 1987, no. 47, illustrated p. 9
Atlanta, Georgia, High Museum of Art, Georgia Collects, January-March 1989, p. 212, illustrated p. 174

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. There is craquelure in the sky, water and lower right foreground. Under UV: there is no apparent inpainting. This work may benefit from a light cleaning.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1943 Milton Avery left Valentine Dudensig’s gallery to join Paul Rosenberg. The association with this important New York gallery and its connection to the modern French masters gave the artist a newfound confidence. As a result, Avery’s productivity increased and his painting style began to develop in a new direction. Barbara Haskell writes, “As the forties advanced, Avery’s concentration on color and the simplification of shapes became increasingly intense” (Milton Avery, New York, 1983, p. 92).

In the summer of 1947, Avery and his family escaped the heat of New York City by traveling to Northwest Canada, where he filled his sketchbooks with views of the countryside. In Mountain Landscape, Avery depicts the dense green forest and still blue lake as one flat plane of color whose layers visually convey a sense of the spaciousness and depth of an actual panoramic view. Though they mostly lack a specificity of place, even when based on preliminary studies of particular locations, Avery’s “landscapes are not just any landscapes but have the bewitching quality of recalling to each observer a particular landscape” (Una Johnson, Milton Avery: Prints and Drawings, 1920-1964, 1966, p. 14).

Avery was especially interested in uniting simplified design and expressive color without pushing his art towards pure abstraction. He used color to his advantage, as he was more concerned with overall tonal harmonies than exact truth to nature. In the present work, simplified bands of blue, green and black represent the sky, water and trees, as he worked toward his goal of reducing elements to their purest forms.  “I always take something out of my pictures,” the artist remarked. “I strip the design to essentials; the facts do not interest me so much as the essence of nature” (Ibid., p. 148). Though Avery pushed the limits of abstraction, he always included some detail, such as the trunks of the trees, to keep his paintings from becoming veritable color-fields. While Avery was not interested in taking his works beyond concrete references, these landscapes, with their emphasis on bands of color, had a distinct impact on artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, who pushed Avery’s ideas fully into abstraction.