Night Harbor
Artist
Milton Avery
(American, 1885-1965)
CultureAmerican
Date1957
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 44 x 57 in. (111.8 x 144.8 cm)
InscribedSigned and dated lower left: Milton Avery 1957
Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number71.1085
Collections
On View
Chrysler Museum of Art, 310, ROW 81
Label TextMilton Avery American, 1885–1965 Night Harbor, 1957 Oil on canvas Night Harbor represents the ocean as seen from Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Milton Avery spent the summer of 1957 with his friend and fellow painter Mark Rothko. Throughout his career, Avery’s work teetered on the edge of abstraction, yet maintained recognizable subject matter. Painted toward the end of his life, this simply composed work is nearly all abstraction with only a thin yellow line identifying a rising or setting sun, while the frenzied brushstrokes suggest the atmospheric effects in the summertime sky. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.1085 ProvenanceThe artist; purchased from the artist by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to The Chrysler Museum, 1971. Exhibition History"Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976. "Remix Redux: A Fresh Mix For Our Modern And Contemporary Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, August 15 - December 30, 2012.Published ReferencesDennis R. Anderson, _Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum_, exh. cat., Norfolk, Va., 1975, 211. _The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia_ (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 106. ISBN: 0-940744-37-6 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 212-213, no. 131. "Nachts im Hafen: Fundstücke aus Kunst und Literatur," in _Mere_ August-September 2020, no. 141, p.33.
