Location

226B American Modern

Fun Fact

Milton Avery worked several factory jobs before launching his career as an artist.

Description

Featuring three boats, a land mass, and the surrounding ocean and sky, Blue Bay was inspired by the artist's summer trip to Provincetown, Massachusetts. At this late stage in his career, Avery was creating larger scaled and more abstracted compositions that would constitute his final body of work. In spite of the high degree of abstraction and deliberate lack of perspective in this painting, the artist provides just enough information to convince viewers that we are glimpsing a coastal summer view.

Inscriptions

Inscription

Signed and dated, lower left: Milton Avery 1960

Provenance

(Alexandre Gallery, New York, NY, sold to Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley)

-2020

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art

2020-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Brown, Heather Lemonedes, ed. The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, exh. cat.(Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022). Mentioned PP. 164, 254; Reproduced PP. 14, 165.

Grad, Bonnie Lee, and Sally Michel Avery, Milton Avery (Royal Oak, MI: Strathcona, 1981). Mentioned P. 4.

Greenberg, Clement. Milton Avery, exh. cat. (London: Waddington Galleries, 1962). Reproduced Plate 11.

Kaufman, Louis. Milton Avery: Recent Paintings, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Felix Landau Gallery, 1961). Reproduced Plate 5.

Kramer, Hilton. Milton Avery: Paintings 1930-1960. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1962). Mentioned P. 26; Reproduced Plate 6.

Milton Avery: Paintings and Watercolours, exh. cat. (London: Waddington Galleries, 1996). Mentioned P. 24-25; Reproduced P. 33.

Mullins, Edwin. "Developments in Style--XV: Milton Avery," London Magazine 4 (January 1965). Reproduced Plate between PP. 36-37.

Kramer, Hilton. Milton Avery: Paintings, 1930-1960. New York, NY: Thomas Yoseloff, 1962. Reproduced: p. 26, pl. 6

Breeskin, Adelyn D. Milton Avery. Washington DC: National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; distributed by the New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, CT, 1969. Reproduced: no. 105

Exhibition history

Milton Avery. National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington DC (December 12, 1969-January 25, 1970); Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (February 17-March 29, 1970); Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (April 24-May 31, 1970).

Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).