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Lot Essay
Milton Avery’s Female Painter of 1945 was painted during the most important period of the artist’s career when his iconic figural style fully flourished. Avery’s work ascended to another level as he immersed himself in the New York art scene, exhibiting with prestigious modern art dealers Paul Rosenberg and Durand-Ruel. As the Arts Digest critic declared in 1944, “After remaining unnoticed for a good many years Milton Avery has of late become a sort of institution...a general cordiality prevails in regard to this innocently sophisticated form of picture making.” (Arts Digest, vol. 19, 1944, p. 10) Female Painter exemplifies this ‘innocent sophistication’ that has drawn Avery acclaim ever since. Combining artfully simplified forms with a masterful play of color, the painting inspires the viewer to join Avery’s uniquely wonderful view of the world. Featured in a 1989 show “My Wife Sally, My Daughter March,” Female Painter also allows a glimpse into Avery’s own life and family, as the figure was likely inspired by his wife and fellow artist Sally Michel.
Avery was constantly seeking ideas from daily life and could be found with his sketchbook in hand even while sitting and chatting with friends for an evening. Sally Michel Avery was also constantly drawing, often for her work as a commercial illustrator that she took on to support her husband’s career, as well as for her own creative paintings explored mainly during their summer vacations. She recalled, “We always sat around and sketched. It was a real life with a viewpoint. The viewpoint was painting.” (Oral history interview with Sally Michel Avery, 1967 November 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution) In the present work, the viewpoint is literally painting, showing the titular female painter (likely Sally) at work on a canvas, with another easel in the background—perhaps where Avery himself had just stepped away.
Whereas many of Avery’s paintings show figures at rest or leisure, often with a contemplative mood, Female Painter captures the artist in a moment of focused activity. While Avery characteristically distills the face to its most basic form, his subject nonetheless exudes personality. Her posture with crossed legs, while leaning forward in her chair to apply brush to canvas, suggests a calm confidence in her role as artist. Coupled with the brilliant orange chosen for her skin, she stands out with a palpable vibrancy amongst the comfortable, cooler-toned setting. Avery’s depiction of relaxed focus might reflect how he saw Sally’s personality as both painter and partner. Alternatively, seeing Female Painter as an archetype of an artist rather than personal subject, the work perhaps reveals greater insight than Avery’s posed self-portraits into the attitude with which he himself approached his easel.
Yet, Sally explained that Avery was always more focused on color and form than the underlying subject itself, recounting, “His problem was always a painter's problem, which had nothing to do with actually what he was painting. He really thought in terms of shapes and spaces and colors and things like that. And the subject was just something that he used to start a move on this other journey.” (Oral history interview with Sally Michel Avery, 1967 November 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
In Female Painter, the subject’s attitude of serenity as well as intense focus is perhaps echoed by the color relations within the composition that feature areas of both harmony and tension. The two analogous shades of light blue within the background and the figure’s pants vibrate against each other, whereas the dramatic orange face glows uninhibitedly against the black hair and dark outline of the profile.
Describing his style during this pivotal mid-1940s period, Barbara Haskell summarizes, “In effect Avery combined the non-associative color from his earlier work with the flattening of shape and homogenization of color developed in the early thirties. The mature Avery style was born." (B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, pp. 85-89) In the absence of shadows and modeling, the relationships between Avery’s colors, and his placement of the flat color fields against each other, are how he conveys space and perspective within the scene. French artist Henri Matisse described an approach to painting which could equally serve to define Avery’s own technique in Female Painter: “Fit your parts into one another and build up your figures as a carpenter does a house. Everything must be constructed—built up of parts that make a unit...” (as quoted in Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, p. 50) Though Avery discounted the influence of Matisse on his work, it seems undeniable that he was inspired by the French artist's similar use of broad, interlocking shapes to create depth and his preference for flat color over blended shades.
As embodied by Female Painter, Avery’s friend Mark Rothko reflected, “What was Avery's repertoire? His living room, Central Park, his wife Sally, his daughter March…his friends and whatever world strayed through his studio: a domestic, unheroic cast. But from these there have been fashioned great canvases, that far from the casual and transitory implications of the subjects, have always a gripping lyricism, and often achieve the permanence and monumentality of Egypt.” (as quoted in A.D. Breeskin, Milton Avery, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1969, n.p.) In the present work, Avery indeed transforms a portrait from his everyday life into a poetic reflection on the personality of an artist, elevated to an archetype through the means of bold color.
Avery was constantly seeking ideas from daily life and could be found with his sketchbook in hand even while sitting and chatting with friends for an evening. Sally Michel Avery was also constantly drawing, often for her work as a commercial illustrator that she took on to support her husband’s career, as well as for her own creative paintings explored mainly during their summer vacations. She recalled, “We always sat around and sketched. It was a real life with a viewpoint. The viewpoint was painting.” (Oral history interview with Sally Michel Avery, 1967 November 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution) In the present work, the viewpoint is literally painting, showing the titular female painter (likely Sally) at work on a canvas, with another easel in the background—perhaps where Avery himself had just stepped away.
Whereas many of Avery’s paintings show figures at rest or leisure, often with a contemplative mood, Female Painter captures the artist in a moment of focused activity. While Avery characteristically distills the face to its most basic form, his subject nonetheless exudes personality. Her posture with crossed legs, while leaning forward in her chair to apply brush to canvas, suggests a calm confidence in her role as artist. Coupled with the brilliant orange chosen for her skin, she stands out with a palpable vibrancy amongst the comfortable, cooler-toned setting. Avery’s depiction of relaxed focus might reflect how he saw Sally’s personality as both painter and partner. Alternatively, seeing Female Painter as an archetype of an artist rather than personal subject, the work perhaps reveals greater insight than Avery’s posed self-portraits into the attitude with which he himself approached his easel.
Yet, Sally explained that Avery was always more focused on color and form than the underlying subject itself, recounting, “His problem was always a painter's problem, which had nothing to do with actually what he was painting. He really thought in terms of shapes and spaces and colors and things like that. And the subject was just something that he used to start a move on this other journey.” (Oral history interview with Sally Michel Avery, 1967 November 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)
In Female Painter, the subject’s attitude of serenity as well as intense focus is perhaps echoed by the color relations within the composition that feature areas of both harmony and tension. The two analogous shades of light blue within the background and the figure’s pants vibrate against each other, whereas the dramatic orange face glows uninhibitedly against the black hair and dark outline of the profile.
Describing his style during this pivotal mid-1940s period, Barbara Haskell summarizes, “In effect Avery combined the non-associative color from his earlier work with the flattening of shape and homogenization of color developed in the early thirties. The mature Avery style was born." (B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, pp. 85-89) In the absence of shadows and modeling, the relationships between Avery’s colors, and his placement of the flat color fields against each other, are how he conveys space and perspective within the scene. French artist Henri Matisse described an approach to painting which could equally serve to define Avery’s own technique in Female Painter: “Fit your parts into one another and build up your figures as a carpenter does a house. Everything must be constructed—built up of parts that make a unit...” (as quoted in Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, p. 50) Though Avery discounted the influence of Matisse on his work, it seems undeniable that he was inspired by the French artist's similar use of broad, interlocking shapes to create depth and his preference for flat color over blended shades.
As embodied by Female Painter, Avery’s friend Mark Rothko reflected, “What was Avery's repertoire? His living room, Central Park, his wife Sally, his daughter March…his friends and whatever world strayed through his studio: a domestic, unheroic cast. But from these there have been fashioned great canvases, that far from the casual and transitory implications of the subjects, have always a gripping lyricism, and often achieve the permanence and monumentality of Egypt.” (as quoted in A.D. Breeskin, Milton Avery, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1969, n.p.) In the present work, Avery indeed transforms a portrait from his everyday life into a poetic reflection on the personality of an artist, elevated to an archetype through the means of bold color.