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Lot Essay
Throughout his career, Milton Avery repeatedly returned to depictions of the American landscape, exploring its hills and fields in a progressively abstract manner. Simultaneously, his depictions of animals have been a cornerstone of his oeuvre—including images of chickens, goats, pigs and birds. Painted in 1962, Goat Wading combines these two signature themes into a dynamic and charismatic image.
Avery reduces the natural environment in the present work to its most essential elements. Epitomizing one of his quintessential compositional formats, the artist divides the background into three horizontal layers of monochromatic color fields—green grass or sky along the top edge, soft yellow for the middle ground, and shadowy water in the foreground. He then adds vitality to the scene with a dancing surface; the upper green band is particularly compelling here, with vertical brush marks added to create a spontaneous pattern.
The titular wading goat occupies the center of the composition, painted in white accented with very pale, cool blue. As with many of his animals, Avery is not interested in transcribing meticulous details of the animal; rather, he seeks to capture the style and personality of his subject. In Wading Goat, he adds further whimsy with the reflections of the animal’s legs in the water, which add a sense of greater height to the animal as it poses boldly in the middle of the composition.
Goat Wading demonstrates how Avery’s experimentation with color fields made him such an influence to the following generation of Abstract Expressionist painters, including his friends Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Yet, Avery never fully abandoned representation, delighting throughout his career in evoking the follies to be found amidst the fauna and flora he found on his travels.
Avery reduces the natural environment in the present work to its most essential elements. Epitomizing one of his quintessential compositional formats, the artist divides the background into three horizontal layers of monochromatic color fields—green grass or sky along the top edge, soft yellow for the middle ground, and shadowy water in the foreground. He then adds vitality to the scene with a dancing surface; the upper green band is particularly compelling here, with vertical brush marks added to create a spontaneous pattern.
The titular wading goat occupies the center of the composition, painted in white accented with very pale, cool blue. As with many of his animals, Avery is not interested in transcribing meticulous details of the animal; rather, he seeks to capture the style and personality of his subject. In Wading Goat, he adds further whimsy with the reflections of the animal’s legs in the water, which add a sense of greater height to the animal as it poses boldly in the middle of the composition.
Goat Wading demonstrates how Avery’s experimentation with color fields made him such an influence to the following generation of Abstract Expressionist painters, including his friends Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Yet, Avery never fully abandoned representation, delighting throughout his career in evoking the follies to be found amidst the fauna and flora he found on his travels.