Artist and Nude

1940

Milton Avery

Associated Names
Milton Avery

Painter, American, 1885 - 1965

This is a painting that shows a nude woman with pale skin and bright orange hair standing upright on a low teal couch or mattress. She faces us and appears to hold a pink pillow or blanket in her right hand. Closest to us, in the left corner of the painting, a man is seated with his back to us, wearing a tan coat and holding a sketchpad. He has magenta skin and brown hair cut close to his head. Neither of the people have detailed features, and their bodies are painted in flat areas of color. The background consists of a blue area resembling a window behind the standing woman, surrounded by orange, yellow, and pink walls with faint swirling patterns. The ground beneath the teal bed is a greenish-gray color, with faint patterns in white suggesting wood grain.
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In Artist and Nude, Milton Avery depicted himself with his back to the viewer, sketching from a nude model. The model stands on a bed, her figure framed by an open window. In keeping with his reductive aesthetic, Avery refined the pictorial elements into broad expanses of two-dimensional form and color. He also employed a technique called sgraffito, using the pointed end of his brush to incise design elements like the wood grain of the floorboards. The painting’s figural subject, bold colors, emphasis on decorative patterning, and prominently placed open window are reminiscent of the French fauve artist Henri Matisse.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Yves-André and Christine Istel

  • Dimensions

    overall: 94 x 73 cm (37 x 28 3/4 in.)
    framed: 93.7 x 73 x 4.1 cm (36 7/8 x 28 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1991.192.1

More About this Artwork

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Artist and Nude, 1940

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist's wife, Sally Michel Avery [1902-2003], New York; (William Zierler Gallery, New York); Mr. and Mrs. Yves-André and Christine Istel, New York; gift 1991 to NGA.

Associated Names

Inscriptions

lower left: Milton Avery; center reverse: "Artist & Nude" / by / Milton Avery / 36 x 25 / 1940

Wikidata ID

Q20193240

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