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Lot Essay
Painted in 1933, Sitters by the Sea stands as an important early example of Milton Avery's famed aesthetic of color field-based, abstracted realism, foreshadowing his greatest works of the following decades. As Barbara Haskell writes, "his paintings of the early thirties were clearly the progenitors of his mature style. Sitters by the Sea shares with late paintings a minimization of detail and flattening of form into large fields of uniform color which lock together as abstract arrangements. Even Avery's characteristic three-tiered division of space into sky/sea/land is already evident in the earlier work." (Milton Avery, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1982, p. 49) Marla Price affirms, "As a portent of Avery’s mature style of the forties and fifties, Sitters by the Sea is one of the most important paintings of the thirties." (The Paintings of Milton Avery, PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1982, pp. 61-62)
Furthermore, Karl Emil Willers posits that the nascent style and technique of Sitters by the Sea represents a philosophy toward the interaction between people, objects and environments that underlies much of Avery's best work. Sitters by the Sea "clearly embodies all the elements of a style that he would further refine and experiment with, but never really depart from, for the remainder of his career. The painting depicts people sitting, and one child standing, upon a beach contemplatively surveying the broad expanse of sea and sky which extends before them. Illusionistic detail has been removed from the scene...There emerges a direct, almost naïve presentation of the commonplace--and a contemplative stillness-of-moment characteristic of Avery's late works...In Sitters by the Sea there are no hard edges or sharp lines dividing one color area from another. There is instead a scumbling of borders dividing color shapes, causing them to merge and bleed into one another. These muted edges, combined with the studied use of closely valued hues, result in a mingling of objects with the space surrounding them. Thus, Avery's painting comes to express the continuity between material objects and the light and space in which they exist." (Milton Avery & The End of Modernism, New Paltz, New York, 2011, n.p.)
Beyond its influence as one of the earliest examples of Avery's mature approach, Sitters by the Sea also resonates as a key moment in Avery's career due to his rare inclusion of African American figures in the scene. The work was likely inspired by visits to Coney Island, as suggested by the catamaran-type beached boat upon which the figures appear to be resting and which is also seen in some of Avery's other Coney Island paintings. Featuring what appears to be a small white child heading toward the water with African American adults looking on, the painting suggests similar themes as The Nursemaid of 1934 in the collection of The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Furthermore, Karl Emil Willers posits that the nascent style and technique of Sitters by the Sea represents a philosophy toward the interaction between people, objects and environments that underlies much of Avery's best work. Sitters by the Sea "clearly embodies all the elements of a style that he would further refine and experiment with, but never really depart from, for the remainder of his career. The painting depicts people sitting, and one child standing, upon a beach contemplatively surveying the broad expanse of sea and sky which extends before them. Illusionistic detail has been removed from the scene...There emerges a direct, almost naïve presentation of the commonplace--and a contemplative stillness-of-moment characteristic of Avery's late works...In Sitters by the Sea there are no hard edges or sharp lines dividing one color area from another. There is instead a scumbling of borders dividing color shapes, causing them to merge and bleed into one another. These muted edges, combined with the studied use of closely valued hues, result in a mingling of objects with the space surrounding them. Thus, Avery's painting comes to express the continuity between material objects and the light and space in which they exist." (Milton Avery & The End of Modernism, New Paltz, New York, 2011, n.p.)
Beyond its influence as one of the earliest examples of Avery's mature approach, Sitters by the Sea also resonates as a key moment in Avery's career due to his rare inclusion of African American figures in the scene. The work was likely inspired by visits to Coney Island, as suggested by the catamaran-type beached boat upon which the figures appear to be resting and which is also seen in some of Avery's other Coney Island paintings. Featuring what appears to be a small white child heading toward the water with African American adults looking on, the painting suggests similar themes as The Nursemaid of 1934 in the collection of The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.