Distant Hills
1943
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 12.8 x 20 cm (5 1/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Sally Michel Avery
Accession Number
2002.104.2.12
Art Historical Context
**Distant Hills** is a delicate graphite drawing on wove paper by American modernist Milton Avery, created in 1943. just 12.8 x 20 cm (5 1/16 x 7 7/8 in.), this intimate work captures the artist's characteristic simplified forms and subtle tonal variations, evoking vast landscapes through economical lines. Avery, often called a "poet of color" in his paintings, frequently used drawings like this as preparatory studies, bridging his observations of nature with modernist abstraction during the World War II era, when American art sought solace in everyday beauty. The medium of graphite on wove p...
About the Artist
Milton Avery
Milton Avery, born on March 7, 1885, in Altmar, New York, to a working-class family—his father a tanner—grew up in modest circumstances. After his family's move to the Hartford area of Connecticut in 1898, he took on various manual jobs, including as a mechanic, clerk, and construction worker, to support himself and relatives following family tragedies. His artistic path began around 1905 at the C...