Hammock Reader
Milton Avery
Description
Milton Avery
United States, 1885–1965
Hammock Reader
1951
Oil on canvas
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Marvin E. Klein, 1974/2.37
In 1951, the year this painting was completed, Avery spent the summer in Woodstock, New York with his wife and their daughter, March, who is probably the reader in the hammock. Avery’s style underwent a subtle shift after he suffered a heart attack in 1949: his work became quieter as he began using more muted color harmonies and applying thin washes of paint to create veiled fields of color. Concerned with surface qualities rather than density and volume, he used flat tones to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the picture plane. This work marks Avery’s later period in which he dropped any hint of facial or ornamental detail and concentrated on shape, color, and composition, simplifying and reducing forms in order to extract their essence.
Subject Matter:
Milton Avery suffered a massive heart attack in 1949 which marked a significant change in his paintng style, reflected in this work. After his heart attack his paintings and prints featured more muted colors and increasingly abstract forms. The year this painting was painted, Avery spent the summer in Woodstock, NY with his wife, Sally, and their daughter, March, who is probably the reader in the hammock. This work marks Avery’s later period in which he drops any hint of outline, facial and ornamental detail and concentrates on shape, color and composition. He uses undercoats of color, building, layering and scratching to create depth. He uses muted color values and flat tones—he is concerned with surface qualities rather than density and volume. He emphasized the two-dimensionality of the picture plane and was interested in the inter-relation of color and shapes on a single plane.
Physical Description:
Painting depicting a featureless female figure, in tones of aqua and light blue extending across the center of the canvas in a light gray hammock. There is a bright white shape, perhaps a book, in the middle of the figure. Behind the figure, the rest of the composition is organized in horizontal sections. At top, a yellow sky; below that are two gently-curved mountains in dark brown, followed by two horizontal planes of color in tan and light brown. KM
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