Summer with the Averys (Milton, Sally, March) at Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut

Featuring landscapes, seascapes, beach scenes, and figural compositions – as well as rarely seen travel sketchbooks ­– the exhibition (11 May–1 September 2019) takes an innovative approach to the superb work produced by the Avery family. Along with canonical paintings by Milton Avery, the show offers a unique opportunity to become acquainted with the remarkable art created by Avery’s wife Sally and their daughter March.

In the summer of 1924, while painting in the fishing port and artist’s colony of Gloucester, Massachusetts, Avery met young artist Sally Michel, whom he would marry less than two years later. They would return to Gloucester and elsewhere in New England for summertime visits during the following decade, sometimes with their close friends Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. After March Avery’s birth in 1932, the threesome ventured forth over the years as far south as Mexico (including six weeks at San Miguel de Allende); west to Laguna Beach, California; and north to Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula. In addition to working vacations in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Woodstock, New York, the Averys were artists-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and Yaddo in upstate New York. In the summer of 1952 the Avery family traveled together to Europe for their first and only time (although Sally and March would subsequently work abroad on many occasions).

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Image: Milton Avery (American, 1885-1965), Thoughtful Swimmer, 1943

Watercolor on paper, 30 3/4 x 22 1/2 in

Private Collection, New York

© 2019 The Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: Paul Mutino