Milton Avery

Milton Avery (1885-1965)

(A Hartford Biography)

© Gary W. Knoble, 2014

Milton Avery is arguably Hartford’s most celebrated painter. He was not born there, but lived in the Greater Hartford area from age 13 to age 40 when he moved to New York. He was from a working class family and gained much of his artistic schooling at night, working at manual jobs during the day to support himself and his extended family. He evolved from a landscape painter in the early 20th century American tradition into one of the most celebrated American modernists.

Avery was born March 7, 1885 in Sand Bank, (later named Altmar), in upstate New York, not far from Lake Ontario. His father, Russell N. Avery was a tanner. His mother, Esther March, was from nearby Williamsport. He was the youngest of four children. His brothers were George and Fabian and his sister was Minnie. In 1898, the family moved to Wilson Station, which was a rural suburb of East Hartford, Connecticut. The tanning business around Lake Ontario was in decline and Hartford was a rising manufacturing center where jobs were plentiful. His brother George had died by the time of the move. The family lived in a two family house in Wilson Station. His brother Fabian was married and lived in the house with his wife and two young daughters.

In 1901, at age 16, Avery left school and began a series of jobs with manufacturing companies. He first worked for the Hartford Machine and Screw Company. In 1904 he moved to the Underwood Mfg. Company where he worked for six years as an assembler, latheman, and mechanic. (At that time, most of the world’s typewriters were made in Hartford,)

In 1905, his father was killed in a wood chopping accident. At about the same time, Avery saw an advertisement for the Connecticut League of Art Students, a night class for men that had been started by Charles Noel Flagg in 1887. He had already shown artistic promise and enrolled in the night school, hoping to use his artistic skills in his work. When the lettering class ended, Flagg convinced Avery to join his life drawing class. He studied at the League off and on part time from 1905 until 1918. Barbara Haskill, in her well-researched biography of Avery includes a description of the League:

“The League charged no tuition and offered no formal instruction; it was simply one large room in downtown Hartford to which students had free access at night. Instruction consisted of drawing from models or antique casts and receiving individual criticism several times a week from Flagg or from Albertus E. Jones, who became director of the League after Flagg's death in 1916.” (Jones did continue to teach at the League after Flagg’s death, But James Goodwin McManus became the director). (Haskill, page 16)

James Britton, who attended the League a few years earlier, included two vivid descriptions of the League in his unpublished autobiography written in 1935:

When I saw the tall wooden partitions (at the Connecticut League of Art Students), the brilliant arc lamps burning, and with students bending over their drawing boards in the antique room and standing at their easels in the life class, everything I had seen of art class in New York - and the National Academy and George DeForest Brush’s class in the Art Student’s League – seemed pretty small. I went back to the big city feeling sorry for it that little Hartford could surpass it in this particular,

The loft (at the Connecticut League) was exactly the kind of place artists yearn for – capacious, rough, full of shadows and shifting cross lights, a place where you could paint in perfect freedom, a floor of heavy timbers which would take immediate proper care of paint drops or spilled turpentine. The brick walls were full of juts and recesses that made roomy shelves where things could be tossed and forgotten – and later explored with surprising results. The windows in the south room were high and outside the face of the building projected so that there was a wide trough. We used to climb up and sit on the deep window sill with feet in the trough and paint sunsets that glowed over behind the granite edifice on the green hill of Bushnell’s Park.

By 1911, Avery had decided upon painting as a profession listing himself as “artist” in the 1911 Hartford City Directory.

His remaining brother, Fabian died in 1913 and in 1915, his sister Minnie’s husband died, leaving Avery as the only male in a household that included three widows, (his mother, his sister, and his sister-in-law), and six nieces. Around this time they all moved to a four family house at 98 Connecticut Boulevard in East Hartford. Their neighborhood at the time is described in a history of East Hartford as a den of crime. There was clearly a great deal of pressure on Avery to bring home money.

While he worked during the day, he continued his studies and his painting at night. His first recorded participation in a public exhibition was in the Connecticut Academy of Fine Art’s “Fifth Annual Exhibition of Oil Painting and Sculpture”, held at the Wadsworth Atheneum, February 15-28, 1915, where he showed a painting entitled “Glimpse of the Farmington” (now lost).

In 1916 he again worked at the Underwood Company for a short time as an assembler. In May of 1917, he began working at the Traveler’s Insurance Company as a night file clerk in the Claims Department where he stayed for five years. Shortly after this in 1918, he transferred from the Connecticut League of Art Students to the School of the Art Society of Hartford (which eventually became the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford). Charles Noel Flagg, the founder of the Connecticut League, died in November of 1916. Flagg was replaced by James Goodwin McManus. Albertus Jones, who had been teaching at the League, transferred to the Art Society of Hartford sometime before 1919. Since Jones is the only teacher officially recognized in Avery’s many biographical sketches, it is possible that Avery began working at night in order to study with Jones at the Art Society where classes were held during the day.

A fellow Hartford painter, Aaron Berkman had studied at the League from 1916 to 1918 when he also transferred to the Art Society. Berkman was to be a lifelong friend of Avery’s. It seems likely that the two young friends, who had met at the League, transferred at the same time in order to study with Jones. Avery’s talent was quickly recognized at the Art Society. In 1919 he won a prize for portrait and life drawing. Haskill’s book contains a photograph of his winning drawing which is now lost.

James Britton describes a visit with Avery at the Art Society in May of 1919.

May 26, 1919

(In Hartford) “Going out met Avery (Milton) who asks me up in the Art Soc. (Bunces’s old studio, Dillon Bldg.) to see his stuff. Find his portrait of Miss Fenning of interest. (Seems to me this portrait made a strong impression on me) (The parenthetic comments were added later when Britton edited the diaries in 1930.) (Volume 3, page 37)

Around 1920, Avery began painting mostly landscapes of the surrounding countryside. Haskell compares the style of these landscapes with those of Ernest Lawson and John Twachtman. From the images provided in the Haskill book, Avery’s brush and palette knife style at the time appears very similar to that of Walter Griffin who was well known in Hartford having taught at both the Art Society and the League some 20 years earlier.

During the 20’s and 30’s, Father Andrew Kelly, an avid collector of contemporary art who lived in Hartford, bought many of Milton and his wife Sally’s paintings. Father Kelly eventually gave his collection to St. Joseph’s College in West Hartford, Connecticut, where it still remains.

In 1920, Avery went to the Gloucester for the first time. Many of his Hartford contemporaries including Britton, McManus, and Carl Ringius were also frequently in Gloucester. Avery was return to Gloucester regularly until 1934.

Still the wage earner of his large extended family, he left The Travelers for a job at United States Tire and Rubber Company and a year later was doing construction work in East Hartford.

1923 saw two group shows in Hartford in which he participated. The first took place at the Atheneum March 10-18, which included Owen Smith, Wallace Putnam, and James Conlon. The second was held in October at the Wiley Gallery. This show included Owen Smith again, as well as Francis H. Storrs and Cornelia Vetter. The review in The Hartford Courant was by Wallace Putnam.

Not usually a joiner of art associations, he did however, join the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts in 1924, having participated in their annual shows since 1915. He continued to participate in almost all of their annual shows until 1931.

During his 1924 visit to Gloucester he met Sally Michel, a young painter from Brooklyn, who was to become his wife and life-long muse. 1924 also saw two one man shows in Hartford, the first, in November at the Green Gate Studio and the second in December at the old Gate Studio. Carl Ringius, a classmate from the League, and fellow member of the Gloucester colony wrote reviews of both shows and Wallace Putnam again reviewed the second show in the Hartford Courant. James Britton gave one of his own rare one-man shows in New York in May and Avery signed the guestbook on May 24th.

1925 marked a major milestone in Avery’s life. He decided to move to New York City to be near Sally. His friend Wallace Putnam moved with him and they found an apartment together. While Avery continued to visit and exhibit in Hartford, he never lived there again. James Britton encountered Avery and Putnam in March.

March 11, 1925 “Meet Milton Avery of Hartford at Noble’s Exhibition. Went with him down to his temporary studio to see some pictures of his. Find Wallace Putnam there with him. They are trying out their luck in New York. Hope to stay if they strike something. Putnam says he is from Boston. Is writing some articles on that for the Hartford “Courant”. Tells me Wolfe (the) editor often recalls my contribution to that paper. Putnam a little afflicted with modernism. Paints huge whirling compositions, terrible!” (Misc. Volume 3, page 11)

Britton obviously did not think much of Putnam’s “Modernism”. It makes one wonder what he would have thought of Avery’s later style had lived long enough to see it..

Avery and Sally decided to elope and on May 1, 1926 they were married. They spent their honeymoon in Hartford. They moved into a one room apartment in the Lincoln Arcade at Broadway and 65th Street, where his Hartford friends, Aaron Berkman, Wallace Putnam, and Vincent Spagna also lived. The Hartford boys stuck together. On December 29th his mother died. While he did continue to visit and exhibit in Hartford, his ties with the city were lessening.

At the Connecticut Academy show in March of 1929, his painting, “Brooklyn Bridge”, won the Atheneum prize of $200. James McManus’s portrait of Robert D. McManus won the Margaret Cooper Prize of $100. Their respective styles could not have been more different.

In June of 1930, Avery and Sally were on their way to spend the summer in Maine when they stopped to visit Britton in South Manchester.

June 1, 1930

(Britton is at home in South Manchester, Connecticut) “In come Milton Avery and his wife and another young woman from Hartford who is wearing a red dress. They all notice the portrait of Miss Judson first thing and like it much as they know the lady. Then they look around. They like the new portrait of Blumenthal and the one of Inukai. Avery says of the one of Val (Theodore Victor Carl Valenkamph, 1868-1924) “That was always a good canvas. I remember it since I saw it in your exhibition in Smiths studio” 15 years ago. Mrs. Blumenthal comes in later and makes several criticisms of the portrait of B (her husband). Insists it is too handsome. All ask for Mrs. B and Mrs. Avery asks for Jerome. Avery says he is off to Maine (Misc. Volume 9, page 49)

They did go on to Maine but did not like the living arrangements and decided to spend the summer in Collinsville, a western suburb of Hartford.

They were back in Hartford in December for another show at the Atheneum that ran from December 21, 1930 to January 11, 1931. The show was organized by A. Everett (Chick) Austin Jr., the Director of the Atheneum and included Avery’s close friend Aaron Berkman, Russell Cheney of Manchester, and Clinton O’Callahan of Hartford. The show included both oils and watercolors of all four painters. This was the only show that Austin organized of local painters during his tenure at the Atheneum. Austin’s chief interest was European Modernism. Britton notes in his diary on June 23, 1930 that the Atheneum was asked if they would accept a gift of a picture by Avery but they apparently never responded.

Avery participated in his last show with the Connecticut Academy of Art in March of 1931. Avery and Berkman showed together again in Hartford in March of 1935 at the Stavola Gallery. Brinton’s son Jerome told his father that the gallery could be rented for $30. In December of 1938 Avery participated in the Atheneum’s show

celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Connecticut League of Art Students. He had two more major shows at the Atheneum during his lifetime, the first in March 1953 titled “Milton Avery” and the second in May,1964, shortly before his death, titled “Paintings by Milton Avery”.

Milton Avery died at Montefiore Hospital in New York City on January 3, 1965 after an extended illness. His memorial service was held at The Society of Ethical Culture and he was buried in Artists Cemetery, Woodstock, New York.

He has continued to be honored in the city where he spent 27 years of his young life with regular exhibitions. The first occurred just a few days after his death on January 5-13, 1965 at St. Joseph’s College in West Hartford, Connecticut, featuring the works of his collected by Father Kelly. In November 1968, the New Britain Museum of American Art in nearby New Britain featured and exhibition entitled “The Milton Avery Family”. In August and September of 1970, the William Benton Museum at the University of Connecticut in Storrs exhibited his works. On April 30, 1989, the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford honored their alumnus by opening their new Joseloff Gallery with a show entitled, “Milton Avery, the Poetic Vision”. Florence Berkman, the sister-in-law of Avery’s good friend Aaron Berkman, regularly wrote articles and letters about Avery in the Hartford newspapers from 1957 until her death in 2000.

Avery remembered his difficult childhood in East Hartford with humor. Florence Berkman, in a February 13, 1960 article in the Hartford Times entitled “Ex Hartford Painter’s Exhibit Emphasized Color, Simplicity”, wrote, “Someone once asked Avery if there were a reason why his paintings’ space was reminiscent of Eastern art. ‘Yes, I used to paint in East Hartford.’ “

American Art @ The Phillips Collection, “Milton Avery (1885-1965)”

Britton, James, “Diaries, in James Britton Papers”, Smithsonian Archives of American Art

The Hartford Courant Archives, 3/17/29

Haskill, Barbara, “Milton Avery”, Harper and Row, 1983

Hollis Taggart Galleries, “Milton Avery (1885-1965)”

Moser, Joann, “Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America”, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997, Smithsonan American Art Museum website

The New York Times, April 30, 1989, ART: “Finally, Milton Avery has a Solo Show in Hartford”

Paquette, Lee, “Only More So: The History of East Hartford, 1783-1976”, Raymond Library Co, 1976, page 213-214

SUNY Press, “Milton Avery and the end of Modernism”

Vered Modern and Contemporary Art web site, “Milton Avery, 1885-1965”

Win, Tiffany, “Milton Avery (1885-1965)”, Quest Royal Fine Art website