Bucolic Landscape

Milton Avery loved nature, and often blurred the lines of reality with his vivacious and, at times, surreal color palette. The quietly humorous "Bucolic Landscape" features a large yellow cow resting peacefully in a field with gently rolling hills in the background. The cow, its bony anatomy defined in only a few bold lines, dominates the scene. It is lying down, facing away from us. Seemingly soft and rounded black ears separated by a small, white tuft of hair function like antennae at the sides of its head. Avery had two goals he wanted to achieve in his paintings and commented that, “I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, [and] colors form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time, I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.”