Vendu pour : $28,125

PROVENANCE
The Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto
Collection of James and Elizabeth Eayrs, Toronto

Introduction by Mark Cheetham:

Milton Avery has come to be regarded as one of the most significant American artists of the twentieth century and a leader in modernism worldwide. He was an endearing figure painter, yet his greatest innovations were in landscape. Avery’s unique work in the landscape genre enjoys several distinctions that also encapsulate his prominent place in art history.

His work was pivotal historically, standing between the homegrown themes of American Scene painting of the 1930s and that quintessential American movement, Abstract Expressionism, and both linked and challenged what came before and after it. A quiet person, Avery had a knack for talking with and influencing figures as significant as Mark Rothko, whose use of colour washes he helped to impel, and even Marcel Duchamp, whom Avery taught to play pool in the early 1950s. So pleased was Duchamp that he quipped that he should make calling cards stating "Marcel Duchamp—pupil of Milton Avery." While his painting is highly significant both aesthetically and in the development of American art, and though he was certainly celebrated in his lifetime, Avery also has the distinction of not being a household name today. Individual and visually captivating, paintings such as the four offered here are special to those in the know, notably collectors James Eayrs.

It is instructive to know that Eayrs, now 91, also collected work by Paul-Émile Borduas, David Milne and Jean Paul Riopelle, painters whose work addresses the eye in the most direct of ways. Underlining this mode of understanding art, in 1962, the renowned critic Hilton Kramer wrote in the first monograph published on Avery that it is “in Avery’s aesthetic rather than in his biography that the key to his achievement will be found.” Whether we would call his paintings “abstract” or not for these reasons, all retain a close relationship to observed nature. The four landscapes by Avery here do the same and could be considered amiable cousins to Eayrs’s Canadian pantheon. Avery has also been likened to Henri Matisse, an analogy that underlines the American painter’s mastery of colour. Art historian and museum curator Barbara Haskell memorably dubbed him “one of America’s greatest color poets.”

In the foreword to Haskell’s book accompanying the landmark 1982 to 1983 Avery retrospective, Tom Armstrong, then director of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, provided an apt thumbnail of Avery’s paradoxical legacy:

"An independent thinker, Avery pursued his own aesthetic interests, which were often at odds with the dominant styles of the time. During the flood of enthusiasm for American Scene painting in the 1930s, his work was criticized for being too abstract. When abstraction received critical acclaim in the 1950s, Avery was generally ignored because he refused to abandon all references to natural forms. In spite of the fact that his extraordinary abilities as a colorist strongly influenced several of the Abstract Expressionists — notably Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman — he never achieved a stature comparable to theirs during his lifetime."

James Panero later wrote in the same vein, “In the 1920s, Avery was a colorist when few wanted color; in the 1930s, he was a hazy impressionist when the world wanted hard detail; in the 1950s, he was a representationalist when all-over abstraction was the rage…For those seeking The Next Big Thing,” he continued, “Avery was chronically out of touch.” However, thanks to astute collectors such as Professor Eayrs, and genial dealers such as David Mirvish, from whom the Eayrs purchased the lot 041 in our Fall auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art, historians now praise Avery’s prescience and his independence.

We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto and author of Abstract Art Against Autonomy: Infection, Resistance, and Cure Since the 60s, for contributing the introduction. Please find additional works by Avery from the Collection of James and Elizabeth Eayrs in our Fall live auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art on November, 22, 2017 in Toronto.

We thank the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation for physically examining and confirming their positive opinion of this work. A document from the foundation will accompany this work.

Please note: this work is on preview at the Design Exchange, Toronto from November 18 - 23, 2017.

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