As the world begins to open up, travel is becoming a thing once more. And, apparently, not just for people. Art is also going on tour, it seems.
The famed Phillips gallery and auction house, with a location in Southampton, will be exhibiting a large number of works by the eminently collectible Milton Avery. The show, “Milton Avery: A Sense of Place” will be on display for the month of July, and three of the pieces, which belonged to Oscar winner Peter O’Toole, have made the trip all the way from Ireland to the East End.
“Peter knew the famous gallerist, Leslie Waddington, in London and bought them at Leslie’s expert suggestion during the ’60s,” said Kate O’Toole, daughter of the “Lawrence of Arabia” film star and Welsh actress Dame Sían Phillips; a star in her own right. “John Huston was one of dad’s early art mentors and John bought Averys from Waddington’s at the same time. I remember their Avery spree,” she said with a smile.
The exhibit at Phillips Southampton offers up approximately 50 works directly from the Milton Avery Trust, spanning the career of the artist with a concentration on the different locales that inspired him over the years. The show is curated by the artist’s grandson Sean Cavanaugh and Waqas Wajahat, and the pieces will be available for sale through Phillips’s private sales platform and by auction in the fall.
The three paintings from O’Toole’s private collection are “Bird by Wild Sea” (oil on canvas board, 1961), “White Gull Resting” (oil on canvas board, 1963), and “Gulls in Fog” (watercolor on card, 1945).
In one of the photographs Kate O’Toole shared, a bit of one of the paintings can be seen behind her father. “We’re doing a fake family gathering for a photo shoot,” she said drily.
“Hilariously though, some years ago I took photos of his mantelpiece, which was a random mess of awards. Just a mess. Year after year they kept increasing. Peter didn’t really display them; he just received them routinely then stuffed them onto a shelf out of his way. By great good fortune one of the Averys happens to be on the wall behind all the tchotchkes!”
Robert Manley, Phillips’s Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “Milton Avery is one of the most celebrated American artists of the 20th century, whose relevance continues to the present day. His appeal travels far beyond typical geographic constraints.”
Ranging from the 1930s to the 1960s, the exhibition spans Avery’s illustrious career from early New York City portraits and interiors up to the landscapes of Provincetown, where he worked alongside Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko.
Manley continued: “Among those dedicated to his work was the celebrated actor Peter O’Toole. A household name across the globe for the past five decades, the celebrated actor was a devoted art collector for much of his lifetime and built a remarkable collection, with a particular affinity for Avery’s works. For this exhibition, we are honored to have the opportunity . . . in bringing these rare-to-market works to the public.”
Many of Avery’s most significant works revolve around landscapes and seascapes. All three of the works from O’Toole’s collection portray the shoreline, a favorite subject of Avery’s that he would return to again and again throughout his career. It seems only fitting that these works would be making their international debut in the Hamptons.
Kate O’Toole fondly remembers her father’s affinity for collecting art. “We had a lot of beautiful pieces in our listed Georgian townhouse in Hampstead, North London. I had a particular fondness for the collection of Yeats paintings, which as a child I could stand and stare at forever. I’d get lost in them, completely mesmerised.”
According to her, O’Toole used to say “they were only ‘money on the wall,’ and proved his point some years later by selling them all when he needed to pay a decade’s worth of expensive lawyers during the ’80s. He felt bad about it though, he knew how much I loved them.”
“I remember the day I found out,” she recalled. “Peter arrived in Galway to see me in a play I was doing with Druid Theatre Company. I met him off the plane and the first thing he said to me was that he had some serious news. He hugged me tight and said, ‘I’ve sold all the Yeats. I’m sorry.’ I was so taken aback I didn’t care what the reason was, I wanted to slap him. Instead I recoiled and sort of hissed in his face. Almost a spit of disgust, but not quite. We got over it,” she said.
“Money on the wall” was how O’Toole thought of some of his collection, “such as a Van Gogh ink self-portrait and some Picasso sketches,” Kate O’Toole continued, “but he also had a museum-quality collection of pre-Columbian pottery which he was deeply attached to, much of which he did in fact donate to The British Museum and The National Museum of Ireland.”
This archeological fascination, Kate claimed, came from her father visiting Venezuela while filming “Murphy’s War.”
“He made frequent archaeological sorties around South America, to Peru, Colombia, and later to Mexico where there may have been a little amateur grave-robbing,” said Kate O’Toole, only half-jokingly.
“I often visited dad on these film sets and would come back to London with my child’s luggage packed with wash bag containing Punch and Judy toothpaste for kids, a facecloth, soap and a few pre-Columbian gold masks. You’re not supposed to smuggle these treasures out of the country they were born in, hence I was the perfect choice to be an illegal artefacts mule.” She smiled, “Is it bad that I’m now proud my 10-year-old self never got caught?”
“Milton Avery was one of the most prominent American artists of the 20th century, drawing a wide range of collectors from both the U.S. and the U.K,” said Elizabeth Goldberg, Phillips’s Senior International Specialist, American Art and Deputy Chairwoman, Americas.
“It is a testament to Peter O’Toole’s discerning eye that he was not only able to recognize the painter’s significance in the early 1960s, but to treasure these works in his own collection for nearly 50 years,” she said.
“We’re honored to have been entrusted with the sale of these works by Kate O’Toole and delighted to have the opportunity to bring this collection to the U.S. for the first time in their history,” Goldberg continued. “They are emblematic of both Avery’s historical significance, as well as the storied life led by the iconic Peter O’Toole.”
Kate O’Toole, on the other hand, admitted, “I’m not a collector, of anything. I just don’t understand that impulse. For me, less is more.”
O’Toole is chairwoman of Ireland’s highly acclaimed film festival, the Galway Film Fleadh, and lives in Ireland, as did her dad. “I’m fortunate to have a house in Connemara with stunning views of extraordinary scenery, the ocean, the pale mists over the mountains, the pearlescent, liminal quality of the light at that northern latitude. I have views aplenty, I wouldn’t want to clutter them up with anything else.”
Of Avery’s pieces though, she feels a certain connection. “They’re not of my beloved West of Ireland,” she said, “but they could be. I was thunderstruck one day when I took a stroll to the beach at the end of my driveway in Connemara and saw an exact replica, in real life, of ‘Gulls in Fog.’ There were the seagulls, the sea mist, the empty wooden cable reel on the beach, the ship’s sail, and the island in the background. The very same,” she said.
“Peter’s scholarship was remarkable,” O’Toole said. “He knew the difference between his Toltecs, his Aztecs, his Olmecs, his Mayans, and his Incas, and took a genuine delight in explaining his exuberant display of pottery, jewelry, and sculpture which he’d assembled in their chronological order. I learned about Mesoamerican cultures from these marvelous pieces,” she said.
It seems fitting that the three Milton Avery paintings will be on view at Phillips in Southampton — Avery was a frequent visitor, along with Arshile Gorky, to the Hampton Bays home David Burliak, and the summer Hamptons residences of Moses and Raphael Soyer and Nicolai Cikovsky. We asked Kate what she would imagine these Russian emigre artists to be discussing with Avery over dinner?
“Money,” she answered. “I imagine there’d be a bit of cheerful one-upmanship about who was making the most coin.”
“Milton Avery: A Sense of Place” will be on view at Phillips Southampton from July 1 through July 30. The gallery is located at 1 Hampton Road. For more information, visit www.phillips.com.
