Skip to main content
Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote that “Landscape was always, I believe, Avery’s greatest subject–the subject, that is, that allowed him to create his purest, most inspired paintings.” In Bow River, Avery was inspired by the main headstream for the South Saskatchewan River in southern Alberta, Canada. Avery was especially drawn to coastal scenes in the North. In Avery’s painting, the river is viewed from a grassy slope. Within the steady current, suggested by columns of thin, white wave crests, there are two sandy islands dotted with spindly conifers. On the far bank, another six evergreen trees keep a tenuous hold in a delta of sand. Their teetering forms are reminders of the arctic winds that blow through the river valley. On this day, however, the air is calm; we see fog suspended in a distant valley. Oddly shaped areas of pasture on the distant mountain provide the only hints of human presence in the landscape.
ProvenanceBefore 1976
Borgenicht Gallery, New York, NY [1]
From 1976
Barbara Millhouse, purchased from above in 1976 [1]
From 2022
Partial gift to Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, 12/2022 [2]
Notes:
[1] Art Dealers Association of America documentation, object file
[2]Deed of Gift, object file
Exhibition History1986-1987
Milton Avery: Paintings of Canada
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario
February 1986 - March 1987
1988
Milton Avery: Progressive Images
Boise Art Museum (9/3-10/23/1988)
2001-2002
Milton Avery: The Late Paintings
Milwaukee Art Museum (11/30/2001-1/27/2002)
Norton Museum of Art (2/16 - 44/14/2002)
Published ReferencesBreskin, Adelyn. Milton Avery, The American Federation of the Arts, 1960
Haskell, Barbara, Milton Avery, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1982
Wilkin, Karen, Milton Avery: Paintings of Canada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University At Kingston, 1986
Hobbs, Robert, Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, New York, 2001, p. 13, 104, illustrated in color
Devaney, Edith, Milton Avery, Victoria Miro Gallery, 2017
DepartmentAmerican Art
Bow River
Artist
Milton Avery, 1885 - 1965
Date1947
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 31 × 46 in. (78.7 × 116.8 cm)
Frame: 40 × 55 in. (101.6 × 139.7 cm)
SignedLower right, sgraffito: Milton Avery 1947
Credit LineGift of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright(c) Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number2022.4.1
DescriptionMilton Avery was described by fellow painter Mark Rothko as “a great poet-inventor who had invented sonorities never seen nor heard before…His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty.” Avery was born in 1885 in Altmar, NY as the son of a tanner. For most of his life, he sustained his immediate and extended family through manual labor while he and his wife, Sally Michel Avery, a painter and illustrator in her own right, created modernist works in near obscurity. He sold his first painting to a museum in 1929, to the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which also gave him his first solo exhibition in 1944. In the 1930s, the Averys moved to New York City and formed friendships with other modernists such as Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Adolph Gottlieb. Avery’s radiant colors and simplified forms influenced the abstract painters of the 1950s. Like his near contemporary, Georgia O’Keeffe, Avery became ever bolder in his later years, painting canvases up to six feet wide with an ever greater reduction in forms, approaching near total abstraction. Art historian Robert Hobbs, in his book Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, cited 1947–the year of Bow River–as the beginning of the artist’s fruitful final period. Art critic Hilton Kramer wrote that “Landscape was always, I believe, Avery’s greatest subject–the subject, that is, that allowed him to create his purest, most inspired paintings.” In Bow River, Avery was inspired by the main headstream for the South Saskatchewan River in southern Alberta, Canada. Avery was especially drawn to coastal scenes in the North. In Avery’s painting, the river is viewed from a grassy slope. Within the steady current, suggested by columns of thin, white wave crests, there are two sandy islands dotted with spindly conifers. On the far bank, another six evergreen trees keep a tenuous hold in a delta of sand. Their teetering forms are reminders of the arctic winds that blow through the river valley. On this day, however, the air is calm; we see fog suspended in a distant valley. Oddly shaped areas of pasture on the distant mountain provide the only hints of human presence in the landscape.
ProvenanceBefore 1976
Borgenicht Gallery, New York, NY [1]
From 1976
Barbara Millhouse, purchased from above in 1976 [1]
From 2022
Partial gift to Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, 12/2022 [2]
Notes:
[1] Art Dealers Association of America documentation, object file
[2]Deed of Gift, object file
Exhibition History1986-1987
Milton Avery: Paintings of Canada
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario
February 1986 - March 1987
1988
Milton Avery: Progressive Images
Boise Art Museum (9/3-10/23/1988)
2001-2002
Milton Avery: The Late Paintings
Milwaukee Art Museum (11/30/2001-1/27/2002)
Norton Museum of Art (2/16 - 44/14/2002)
Published ReferencesBreskin, Adelyn. Milton Avery, The American Federation of the Arts, 1960
Haskell, Barbara, Milton Avery, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1982
Wilkin, Karen, Milton Avery: Paintings of Canada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University At Kingston, 1986
Hobbs, Robert, Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, New York, 2001, p. 13, 104, illustrated in color
Devaney, Edith, Milton Avery, Victoria Miro Gallery, 2017
Status
On view