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6/9

Museum of Modern Art, 1946

  • Barbara Buhler Lynes, Independent Researcher & Consultant
Black and white photograph. A white wall with Georgia O’Keeffe’s signature scrawled in black, oversized, cursive letters, takes up the left half of this image. The room beyond is hung with two paintings, and the sliver of an opening leading to another space is barely visible along the right edge. The letters of O’Keeffe’s name are rounded, with the lowercase g and f letters making spikes along its length. One painting in the background is lighter and shows stylized, curving forms; the other painting is dark and difficult to make out.
Figure 1. Installation view of the 1946 exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe at the Museum of Modern Art. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN319.1. Photograph by Soichi Sunami. View on the MoMA website.

Aspects of the significance of the well-received Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1946 have long been recognized in the O’Keeffe literature (figure 1).1 It was the artist’s first retrospective in the epicenter of the American art community and the museum’s second exhibition devoted to the art of a woman.2 What follows identifies another equally important component of the exhibition’s significance. The press release and its subtitle, “Finally, a Woman on Paper,” codified as fact and effectively set into motion arguably the most popular and pervasive myth in the O’Keeffe literature.

That is, the internationally known photographer, gallerist, and leading advocate of modern art in America, Alfred Stieglitz, supposedly exclaimed, “Finally, a Woman on Paper,” upon seeing O’Keeffe’s work for the first time on December 31, 1915. Indeed, from 1946 on, the phrase has been repeated nearly annually in reviews of O’Keeffe’s exhibitions, and in articles, books, and biographies about her. Yet, as will become clear, Stieglitz did not say “Finally, a Woman on Paper” that day despite the 1946 exhibition press release assertion that he did.

Typewritten document. The cream-colored sheet has a press release heading typed in underlined all caps: 'Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe shown in retrospective exhibition at Museum of Modern Art.' The paragraph below is headed with the text in quotation marks, 'Finally a woman on paper.' The paragraph beneath reads, 'These words, spoken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915, were the actual launching of Georgia O’Keeffe on a career that has led to her recognition as a major American artist. On Wednesday, May 15, a retrospective exhibition of her works will open at the Museum of Modern Art and continue through August 25. The exhibition has been selected and installed by James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. Mr. Sweeney has also written the book on O’Keeffe which the Museum will publish concurrently with the exhibition.'
Figure 2. Museum of Modern Art press release (detail), 1946. Full version available for download from the MoMA website.

Exhibition curator James Johnson Sweeney was instrumental in preparing the 12-page press release (figure 2; pdf)—nine pages longer than those typical from the museum then. It included the exhibition checklist, lists of earlier O’Keeffe exhibitions and her paintings in public collections, her curriculum vitae, and information on her background and education. It also explained that her work had been influenced by artist and teacher Arthur Wesley Dow, and included O’Keeffe’s descriptions of important moments in the development of her art. There were also excerpts from the essay Sweeney was preparing for the exhibition catalogue, which was never published.3

The press release also featured a 1916 O’Keeffe letter to Stieglitz, who became her dealer that year and her husband in 1924. Its third page drew attention to this letter and to how Sweeney had obtained it: “In the catalog Mr. Sweeney quotes from a considerable group of unpublished early correspondence—generously put at his disposal by Miss O’Keeffe—between the artist and her discoverer, Alfred Stieglitz.” The “unpublished early correspondence,” however, also included letters O’Keeffe had written in June, August, and October 1915 and January 1916 to her New York friend and former classmate there, Anita Pollitzer.4

O’Keeffe was then teaching in South Carolina and had mailed her friend a series of recently completed drawings. Despite her directive to show them to no one, Pollitzer took them to Stieglitz at his famous avant-garde gallery, 291, on December 31, 1915. When he saw them, he supposedly proclaimed, “Finally a Woman on Paper.”

To be sure, the exhibition subtitle recalls Stieglitz’s description of O’Keeffe’s innovative abstractions when he first exhibited them in 1916. He wrote: “‘291’ had never before seen woman express herself so frankly on paper.”5 And the phrase is also reminiscent of how Stieglitz described O’Keeffe’s work in a late 1917 or early 1918 letter to his friend, photographer Anne Brigman, sent after the one-person O’Keeffe exhibition Stieglitz organized in 1917. He stated: “The room [291] was never more glorious than during its last exhibition—the work of Miss O’Keeffe—A woman on paper—Fearless. Pure Self-Expression.”6 And Stieglitz used similar words when writing O’Keeffe in 1918, when she was teaching in Texas: “Of course, I am wondering what you have been painting—what it looks like—what you have been full of—The Great Child pouring out some more of her Woman self on paper—purely—truly—unspoiled.”7 Yet none of Stieglitz’s words conveys the drama and promotional impact of “Finally, a Woman on Paper.”

Had Stieglitz uttered the phrase in 1915, would Pollitzer not have remembered it when she wrote to O’Keeffe that evening, after she had taken O’Keeffe’s work to Stieglitz? Yet, her ink-written letter, penned in cursive, did not include it. Rather, it only stated: “Why they’re genuinely fine things—you say a woman did these—She’s an unusual woman—She’s broad minded, she’s bigger than most women, but she’s got the sensitive emotion—I’d know that she was a woman—Look at that line . . . they’re the purest, finest, sincerest things that have entered 291 in a long while . . . I wouldn’t mind showing them in one of these rooms one bit.”8

Handwritten letter. Text is written in grayed ink on cream-white paper, except for a line added near the top in what appears to be pencil. Between two inked lines, that added line reads, in quotes, ‘Finally a woman on paper’ – he said.' The visible text of the letter starts and ends mid-sentences. It reads: 'while before his lips opened – Then he smiled at me and yelled ‘Wolkomitz come here’ – Then he said to me ‘Why they’re genuinely fine things – you say a woman did these – she’s an unusual woman – She’s broad-minded, she’s bigger than most women, but she’s got the sensitive emotions – I’d know'.
Figure 3. Anita Pollitzer to Georgia O’Keeffe, December 31, 1915 (detail). Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Moreover, would O’Keeffe not have repeated “Finally, a Woman on Paper” when writing her close friend Arthur Macmahon on January 6, 1916, when quoting from Pollitzer’s letter?9 Yet she wrote: “Stieglitz liked them [her drawings]. Said they were the purest finest sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long time—that he might want to show them later.”10 The absence of the phrase in O’Keeffe’s letter suggests it was not in Pollitzer’s. Yet, it is there now, mostly printed in pencil, in Pollitzer’s hand, and inserted between the cursive lines of Pollitzer’s ink-written letter (figure 3). It thus differs in medium, style, and tone from the more reasoned Stieglitz reaction Pollitzer recorded in ink. How, when, and why then did Pollitzer insert it into a letter that had been in O’Keeffe’s possession since receiving it in 1916?

Its different mediums were first noted in the literature in 1983 and the penciled phrase was then seen as something Pollitzer perhaps added as an afterthought before mailing the letter on January 1, 1916.11 Yet, this difference was soon obscured by the 1990 publication of the O’Keeffe/Pollitzer correspondence.12 It misdated Pollitzer’s December 31, 1915, letter as January 1, 1916, did not mention that the phrase was inserted between the lines of the letter, and made no distinction between its pencil and pen components. Those consulting the book rather than the original letter would not know that the phrase “Finally, a Woman on Paper” was inserted in pencil and might not be original to it. Considering O’Keeffe did not include the phrase in her letter to Macmahon as well as its history in the O’Keeffe literature, as will be reviewed here, it is more probable, as will become clear, that Pollitzer inserted the phrase in 1946 or shortly thereafter, when the phrase and its origin story were validated as fact in the 1946 O’Keeffe exhibition press release.

Although supposedly uttered in 1915, “Finally, a Woman on Paper” did not appear in the literature until 13 years later, which seems odd, given that a great deal had been written about O’Keeffe since 1916 and that the phrase was later considered “eminently quotable.”13 It was in reviewing O’Keeffe’s 1928 exhibition that Stieglitz’s friend Louis Kalonyne first recorded the phrase and its origin story: “‘Finally, a Woman on Paper!’—or words to that general effect—Stieglitz is reported to have said quite moved, to the New York girl friend of O'Keeffe's who had brought the drawings to him.”14 Yet, it did not then take hold in the O’Keeffe literature.

Both the phrase and its origin story surfaced again 13 years later, in a 1941, anonymously written entry on O’Keeffe in Current Biography.15 “Without her permission, the friend showed the drawings to Alfred Stieglitz, who is said to have ejaculated: ‘Finally, a Woman on Paper.’” Ejaculated rarely describes something said. Rather, it refers to the pleasure of male sexual climax. Its use here suggests that Stieglitz wrote or provided input for the entry as he greatly enjoyed provoking controversy. Moreover, the word alludes to how O’Keeffe and her art aroused and satisfied him, as well as to how he had perceived and promoted her art since 1916: as a manifestation of female sexuality.16

Two years passed before the phrase and its origin story were next cited. O’Keeffe’s and Stieglitz’s friend, curator Daniel Catton Rich, referred to both in his essay for the catalogue of O’Keeffe’s first retrospective exhibition that he organized at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943. Rich pointed out: “To Anita Pollitzer in New York [O’Keeffe] sent in 1916 [sic] a roll of sketches with the express condition that they were not to be shown to anyone. . . . Disobeying O’Keeffe’s request she promptly tucked the roll under her arm and took them to one of the few men in America capable of appreciating them—Alfred Stieglitz. . . . He was instantly impressed by O’Keeffe’s drawings. ‘Finally, a Woman on Paper,’ he remarked.”17 One wonders if Rich cited the phrase and its origin story at Stieglitz’s suggestion as it had not yet gained much traction in the O’Keeffe literature, even after the 1941 provocative entry in Current Biography.

That Rich was unaware of the sexist implications of the phrase and its origin story are clear from his catalogue essay. It was the first in the literature to disassociate O’Keeffe’s art from the sexualized interpretations that had dominated its reception since 1916.18 Rich stated:

In the first review of the exhibit in Stieglitz’s own magazine, Camera Work, there occurs the suggestion that these drawings may be of psychoanalytic interest. Exciting as this observation was to a period fascinated by Freud, it has been, in the long run, harmful to O’Keeffe’s case as an artist. It set off a whole train of mystic and sexual explanations of her art which have sometimes stood in the way of understanding.19

“Finally, a Woman on Paper” was quoted once in reviews of the 1943 Chicago exhibition as “At Last, a Woman on Paper,” and again in 1945 in both forms.20 Janet Hollis reviewed O’Keeffe’s exhibition at Stieglitz’s gallery that year, stating “At Last, a Woman on Paper”; and “Finally, a Woman on Paper” was used in the title and cited in the text of an article on O’Keeffe in U.S.A. An American Review.21 But neither the phrase nor its origin story caught on in the O’Keeffe literature until 1946, when both were authenticated as fact in the O’Keeffe exhibition press release and subsequently repeated regularly in the literature. As seemingly unaware of the phrase’s sexist implications as Rich, Sweeney wrote: “These words [“Finally, a Woman on Paper”], spoken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915 were the actual launching of Georgia O’Keeffe.”22

Curiously, given her later refusal to condone associating her art with her gender, O’Keeffe voiced no known objection to the phrase or its origin story.23 She most probably held the same opinion then that she had expressed in an interview with Michael Gold in 1930, stating: "I am trying with all my skill to do a painting that is all of woman, as well as all of me."24 She had first articulated her feelings about this issue when writing Pollitzer on January 4, 1916, about her 1915 charcoal abstractions: “The thing [her work] seems to express in a way what I want it to but—it also seems rather effeminate—it is essentially a womans [sic] feeling—satisfies me in a way.”25 And, by 1946, like the men, O’Keeffe may have believed Stieglitz had uttered “Finally, a Woman on Paper” when first seeing her work.

And she may have realized that the phrase, while referring to her own accomplishment, also indirectly called Stieglitz’s to mind. Long before the 1946 exhibition, Stieglitz had realized arguably his most outstanding achievement, an extensive photographic portrait of O’Keeffe. He completed it between 1917 and 1937, when he retired from photography, and it was clearly his own “Woman on Paper.” Stieglitz’s early photographs of O’Keeffe often presented his subject in the nude, partially dressed, and occasionally posed in front of her abstract works, gesturing toward them with her hands. He had exhibited 45 of them in 1921, when he was still married to his first wife and living with the unmarried O’Keeffe—the exhibition created a sensation.

Clearly, Sweeney had Stieglitz’s “Woman on Paper” in mind. In excerpts from his catalogue essay, which the press release included, he subtly referred to the 1921 exhibition. He stated: “An expression of intense emotion, stark but always constrained, is the essence of O’Keeffe’s art. And the way she came to this was by the severest critical self-stripping.” The anonymous critic for Time riffed on Sweeney’s words, making “Austere Stripper” the title of the review. Art critic Henry McBride’s review referred to the event directly:

There came to notice almost at once something about some photographs showing every conceivable aspect of O'Keeffe that was a new effort in photography and something new in the way of introducing a budding artist. It made a stir. Mona Lisa got but one portrait of herself worth talking about. O'Keeffe got a hundred. It put her at once on the map. Everybody knew the name. She became what is known as a newspaper personality.26

That Sweeney was thinking about Stieglitz’s “Woman on Paper” is also evident from his suggestion that Stieglitz exhibit examples of it in a gallery adjacent to those of O’Keeffe’s exhibition.27 Stieglitz rejected the idea because it would not represent the breadth of his achievement. Yet this was perhaps an excuse, knowing full well how the 1921 exhibition had upset and outraged O’Keeffe. It provided visual equivalents for how Stieglitz was promoting O’Keeffe’s art and prompted critics to associate her art with her body and her sexuality. Indeed, and perhaps at O’Keeffe’s insistence, he only occasionally exhibited one or several of these photographs during his lifetime after 1921.28

Whatever the case, O’Keeffe was in support of most of Sweeney’s efforts. She had allowed him to publish one of her letters to Stieglitz in the press release and had asked Pollitzer to provide him with letters she had sent her friend. The women had remained friends and were both living in New York in 1946, until June, when O’Keeffe left to spend the summer in New Mexico. Pollitzer had made her O’Keeffe letters available to Sweeney, and because she was preparing a review of O’Keeffe’s 1946 exhibition must have asked in turn for access to her letters to O’Keeffe.29 In reviewing her December 31, 1915, letter, she must have realized “Finally, a Woman on Paper” was not there.

Pollitzer was unaware of the degree to which the phrase’s promotional ring differed from the more cautious Stieglitz response she had described in the original letter, its history and origin story in the literature, or that inserting it then in pencil would later call its originality into question. Yet, she knew that “Finally, a Woman on Paper” had become the mantra of the 1946 press release and may have thought she had not remembered exactly how Stieglitz had responded when she showed him O’Keeffe’s work some 30 years earlier. She thus amended her letter to correspond with the premise and subtitle of the 1946 press release. She either added it then or shortly thereafter, when she was preparing the article “That’s Georgia,” published in Saturday Review (1950). In it, she cited the phrase and its origin story, as was the case in her posthumously published book about O’Keeffe, A Woman on Paper.30

Stieglitz died on July 13 at 86 during the run of O’Keeffe’s exhibition, but not before enjoying the adulation heaped on him in Sweeney’s press release and the critical response it and the exhibition generated. While these materials celebrated O’Keeffe and her astonishing achievements, they also drew inordinate attention to Stieglitz. For example, the press release stated: “For more than a decade [Stieglitz has] been introducing to the American public the most modern painting and sculpture from abroad as well as the most advanced American art.” Additionally, it highlighted the role he had played in discovering, promoting, and championing O’Keeffe’s art, the annual exhibitions he had organized of it, as well as the avant-garde publications he had founded, 291 and Camera Work, calling them “the most radical publications of their kind in America.”

Indeed, adulation for Stieglitz so dominated the press release that the critic for Art News called attention to it:

Georgia O’Keeffe’s full-length retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art is a very useful affair. If you walk through it before you read the catalogue [press release] you will be able to form your own picture of what she represents in American art without interruptions on the part of Mr. Stieglitz. The ‘291’ publicity technique need not bewilder you in all its wonderful simplicity until you feel ready to take it.31

Whether Stieglitz suggested the exhibition subtitle to Sweeney or played a part in developing the press release will never be known, but the 1946 exhibition served both artists well. Its press release highlighted the significance of O’Keeffe’s breakthrough charcoal drawings while alluding to Stieglitz’s “Woman on Paper,” and validated as truth the myth of his prescience in immediately realizing her potential as early as 1915.32 It and the press release inexorably linked the two, hitching the aging Stieglitz to the star the much younger O’Keeffe had become, providing Stieglitz a permanent place in the O’Keeffe literature. Indeed, it is not possible to discuss O’Keeffe’s life, art, or career without mentioning Stieglitz.

While this may continue to be the case, it is now clear for the first time that Stieglitz was not as perceptive in 1915 as the myth of his then saying “Finally, a Woman on Paper” implied. He did not come up with the phrase and its origin story until over a decade later, when he developed it as a promotional tool. Stieglitz had no way of knowing that the phrase was not part of the Pollitzer letter that described his reaction to first seeing O’Keeffe’s work but was instead added decades later. Nor could he have imagined that the letter would ultimately reveal as myth the 1946 release and its subtitle’s assertion that Stieglitz had uttered “Finally, a Woman on Paper” as early as 1915.

Notes

  1. For an assessment of the criticism the exhibition received in 1946, see Barbara Buhler Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Icons, Innovators, Voices of Authority,” Moore and O’Keeffe: Bones and Stones to Oil and Bronze, exh. cat. (San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art, 2023), forthcoming. ↩︎

  2. The first was the 1942 Josephine Joy exhibition. ↩︎

  3. The exhibition press release and installation photographs are available on the Museum of Modern Art website: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2851. Letters exchanged between O’Keeffe and Sweeney after 1946 indicate that he continued to work on the catalogue essay, but never completed it. ↩︎

  4. The press release misdates the January letter to November 4, 1915. ↩︎

  5. See Alfred Stieglitz, "Georgia O'Keeffe—C. Duncan—Réné [sic] Lafferty," Camera Work, no. 48 (October 1916): 13. ↩︎

  6. Alfred Stieglitz to Anne Brigman, late 1917 or early 1918, Box 8, folders 169–73, Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (hereafter cited as AS/OK). ↩︎

  7. Alfred Stieglitz to Georgia O’Keeffe, March 31, 1918, AS/OK. ↩︎

  8. Anita Pollitzer to Georgia O’Keeffe, December 31, 1915, Box 208, folder 3649, AS/OK. https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/32191697?child_oid=32192109 ↩︎

  9. O’Keeffe had known Macmahon since 1914, when both were teaching summer courses at the University of Virginia, and by 1916 they had become very fond of one another. ↩︎

  10. Georgia O’Keeffe to Arthur W. Macmahon, January 8, 1916, in Roxana Robinson, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2021), 654. ↩︎

  11. The letter’s envelope is postmarked January 1, 1916. ↩︎

  12. See Nancy Scott, “The Pollitzer-O’Keeffe Correspondence,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 3, no. 17 (Fall 1985): 34–41; and Clive Giboire, ed., Lovingly Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O'Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, introduction by Benita Eisler (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 115. ↩︎

  13. See Anne Middleton Wagner, Three Artists, Three Women: Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 35 and n. 12. ↩︎

  14. See Louis Kalonyme, "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Woman in Painting," Creative Art 2 (January 1928): xxxiv–xl. In his book, Herbert Seligmann, another Stieglitz friend, recorded Stieglitz uttering the phrase and its origin story in 1926, but used the words At Last rather than Finally: “Stieglitz told today [January 6, 1926] of how he met O’Keeffe . . . a young girl, Anita Pollitzer . . . walked in with a roll of drawings under arm. ‘I’ve been asked by letter not to show anyone these . . . but they belong here’ . . . When Stieglitz saw the first one he said: ‘At Last a Woman on Paper.’” But Seligmann’s book was not published until 1966. See Herbert J. Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking: Notes of Some of His Conversations, 1925-1931 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Library, 1966), 23. Because capitalization and punctuation of the phrases vary in the literature, they are referred to here to avoid confusion as “Finally, a Woman on Paper,” and “At Last, A Woman on Paper.” ↩︎

  15. See Current Biography, June 1941, 62–63. ↩︎

  16. See Barbara Buhler Lynes, O’Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 1916-1929 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Kathleen Pyne, Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); and Marcia Brennan, Painting Gender, Constructing Theory: The Alfred Stieglitz Circle and American Formalist Aesthetics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). ↩︎

  17. See Daniel Catton Rich, Georgia O’Keeffe (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1943), 17. ↩︎

  18. See Barbara Buhler Lynes, "The Language of Criticism: Its Effect on the Art of Georgia O'Keeffe in the 1920s," in Georgia O'Keeffe: From the Faraway, Nearby, eds. Ellen Bradbury and Christopher Merrill (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Press, 1992), 43–55. Reprinted in Women’s Art Magazine, no. 51 (March/April 1993): 4–9; and “Georgia O’Keeffe, An American Phenomenon: Issues of Identity,” in Georgia O’Keeffe, ed. Barbara Buhler Lynes (Milan: Skira Editore, 2011), 13–20. In the 1920s, O’Keeffe waged a silent campaign to separate her art from sexualized readings of it, and in the statement for her 1939 exhibition she first openly voiced her concern: “Well—I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—and I don't.” Statement in Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels (New York: An American Place, 1939), n.p. ↩︎

  19. See Rich, Georgia O’Keeffe, 21. ↩︎

  20. Stieglitz also exhibited O’Keeffe’s work in New York that year. ↩︎

  21. See Janet Hollis, "Two American Women in Art—O'Keeffe and Cassatt," Delphian Quarterly 28 (April 1945): 10; and “Georgia O'Keeffe: ‘Finally, A Woman on Paper,’” U.S.A. An American Review 2, no. 8 (1945): 95–96. ↩︎

  22. Museum of Modern Art Press Release. ↩︎

  23. See Barbara Buhler Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe and Feminism: A Problem of Position,” in The Expanding Discourse: Art History and Feminism, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 436–49. ↩︎

  24. See Gladys Oaks, “Radical Writer and Woman Artist Clash Uses—This is an Industrial Age, Michael Gold Tells Georgia O'Keefe [sic], Who Thinks He's All Mixed Up,” The World, March 16, 1930, Women's Section 3. See also Lynes, “Georgia O’Keeffe and Feminism: A Problem of Position”; Brennan, Painting Gender, Constructing Theory; and Linda M. Grasso, Equal under the Sky: Georgia O’Keeffe & Twentieth-Century Feminism (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017). ↩︎

  25. See Giboire, Lovingly Georgia, 117. ↩︎

  26. See Henry McBride, "O'Keeffe at the Museum: An Exhibition that Confirms the Opinion Long Held by the Public," The Sun (New York), May 18, 1946, 9. ↩︎

  27. See James Johnson Sweeney to Mr. [Monroe] Wheeler, May 11, 1946; and Mr. [Monroe] Wheeler to Photography Department, May 13, 1946, Museum of Modern Art Exhibitions, 319.3, Museum of Modern Art Archives. ↩︎

  28. More than 40 years after Stieglitz’s death, O’Keeffe helped organize an extensive exhibition of his “Woman on Paper” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1978, the first project she worked on before her death that brought Stieglitz’s work and his reputation back into the spotlight. Another was the 1983 Stieglitz exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. ↩︎

  29. See Anita Pollitzer, Harper's Bazaar 80, no. 2816 (August 1946): 169. ↩︎

  30. See Anita Pollitzer, "That’s Georgia," Saturday Review of Literature 33, no. 44 (November 4, 1950): 41–43; and A Woman on Paper (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 48. Pollitzer had to have inserted the phrase before O’Keeffe gave the letters she had received from her to the Beinecke Library, because the pencil phrase is in the 1915 letter housed there. O’Keeffe gave a great deal of correspondence and other materials to the library in 1949, but detailed lists of what they included have not been discovered, thus making it impossible to establish a firm date for O’Keeffe’s gift. ↩︎

  31. See Art News 45, no. 4 (June 1946): 51. ↩︎

  32. Ironically, none of the charcoal abstractions O’Keeffe completed in 1915 were in the exhibition, and it included only three works on paper. See Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), entries 64, 99, and 157. ↩︎

Thoma Foundation Logo
Typewritten document. The press release heading is printed with red ink. The only legible line there reads, in the largest letters, 'News Release from the Art Institute of Chicago.' Below, a line in black, all caps reads, 'Three important exhibitions,' and then, a little farther down, 'Georgia O'Keeffe comes to Chicago.' Typewriter text fills the rest of the sheet. A 'note' near the top reads, 'A midwinter group of exhibitions opens January 21 in the East Wing Galleries headlined by the largest retrospective showing of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe ever held. Also included: Religious Folk Art of the Spanish Southwest: and Recent Acquisitions.' The body of the press release reads, 'Miss O’Keeffe, a former student of the school of the Art Institute, and at present the most famous woman painter in the world, is coming to Chicago to direct the installation of her exhibition and to be present at the opening. This is the first retrospective exhibition of her work to be shown in any museum. Sixty-one different pictures will trace the development of her art chronologically from 1916 until today. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Miss O’Keeffe has lived in Chicago, New York, Texas, and the Southwest. Her painting is noted for its luminous, unconventional color and its simplified imaginative use of form.' A subheading reads, also in all caps, 'O'Keeffe pictures bring extremely high prices.' Text continues, 'Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings command higher prices than those of any other living woman. As much as $10,000 has been paid for one painting by her, and this despite the fact that she is completely independent in her approach to her material. In 1923 she wrote the following: ‘One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself – I can’t live where I want to – I can’t go where I want to – I can’t do what I want to – I can’t even say what I want to – . I decided I am a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.’' Creases where the sheet had been folded in thirds are visible.
Figure 1. Art Institute of Chicago press release, January 11, 1943.
Black and white photograph. A cleanshaven man wearing a suit and with a rounded face looks just off to our right with dark eyes in this portrait. His shoulders and face are angled to our right. He has a high forehead, low brows, and a rounded nose and chin. Light glints off his short, dark hair. He wears a suit jacket, a striped button-up shirt, and a diamond-patterned tie.
Figure 2. Daniel Catton Rich, 1939.
Handwritten letter. The letterhead at the top center of the sheet shows a rooster standing atop a crest, with three smaller roosters in a row within. Beneath the shield-shaped crest is a banner that reads, 'The Blackstone.' Under that is printed, 'Chicago' O’Keeffe’s pencil-written letter is below. Her writing is a little choppy with pronounced loops for lowercase letters h, l, and d. Text reads, 'Another day gone – it is Friday night I’ve been up most of the day – wanted to go out but didn’t – I even put a dress on – Maria came for an hour this morning and again at 5 – for supper and left a little after 8 – Narcissa came for half an hour with her husband this evening – Maria says there must have been over 400 people there today – they all agree that everyone feels it'.
Figure 3. Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, January 23, 1943. Letters to Alfred Stieglitz, MS.9. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Watercolor. Two slender lines with tapering, sharply pointed tips extend up from a pool of ink blue in this abstract vertical painting on bone-white paper. A broad smudge of dark blue spans most of the bottom edge of the sheet. The two lines emerge close together from just right of center. The line on the left stretches about two-thirds of the way up the sheet before angling downward, and then back up in a sideways z-shaped zigzag. The vertical line next to it nearly reaches the top edge of the sheet. Both swell and then taper back down near their tips.
Figure 4. Georgia O’Keeffe. Blue Lines X / Blue Lines, 1916. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 25 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Charcoal drawing. Jagged forms, long, bulb-like shapes, and wavy lines are layered up along the center of this cream-white paper in this vertical drawing. A zig-zagging line to our left is filled in with solid medium gray to make a serrated form. Four tall, finger-like mounds clustered next to it, to our right, are darker, almost black. Some strokes of charcoal are visible, especially on the shape closest to us. Wavy lines create an outline for a form like a river to our right, which is shaded lightly but mostly white. The paper is smudged around the collection of forms.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Drawing XIII, 1915 / No. 13, Special, 1916. Charcoal on paper, 24 3/8 x 18 1/2 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Painting. Rust-red, barren hills fill most of this picture. Two dried bones span the bottom edge of the painting close to us, and goldenrod-yellow cliffs fill in the background. A thick, long bone with curved ends sits to our left, just in front of a spine with ten vertebrae. They sit on a low, wine-red hill. The valley leading back to the hill beyond is carpeted in patches of sky blue, white, and pale green. That hill takes up about two-thirds of the picture. Its smooth surface is lined with crevices, and there is a band of lighter orange near the bottom. In the top quarter of the composition, loosely painted strokes of deep yellow, coral pink, lilac purple, terracotta orange, and a few touches of pale turquoise suggest more rocky outcroppings and cliffs.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Red Hills and Bones, 1941. Oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 40 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the PMA website.
Painting. A shiny, round-bellied black vase holds three feathers striped with brown, black, and white, all against a sand-brown background. Light glints off the round body of the vase, which takes up two-thirds the height of this painting. Only the white tip of one feather pokes over the top edge of the vase. More of the light brown and black stripes are visible on the two feathers behind it. A triangular form in the lower right corner and a vertical band running up the canvas, about a quarter of the way in from the right edge, suggest that the vase is tucked into a niche or the corner of a wall.
Figure 7. Georgia O’Keeffe. Turkey Feathers and Indian Pot, 1941. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.
Black and white photograph. Eleven widely spaced paintings line the walls of a long room in this installation view. Through a squared opening at the end of the room opposite us, at least three more doorways telescope into the distance, ending in a flat wall at the far end of the building. The room we are in has a double-sided wooden bench at the center beneath a grid of lights above, which reflects off the shiny dark floor. The paintings show flaring petals or antlers, or layers of geometric shapes.
Figure 8. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white photograph. We look into the far corner of a gallery space, with nine paintings lining the walls to either side of an opening, near the far corner. The paintings show flame-like petals, an animal skull, or abstracted, geometric shapes. The grid of lights above reflects in the dark, shiny floor below. In this view, we see three wooden benches placed along the perimeter of the room.
Figure 9. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white photograph. This room has an opening at the far end, and walls angle inward across the corners to either side of it. Ten paintings are hung along a textured wall that appears gray in this photograph. The paintings show abstracted or stylized trees, mountains, skulls, or layered shapes. With the grid of lights above and the dark floor below, we look into at least three more rooms, barely visible to either side of the nested doorways.
Figure 10. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white newspaper clipping. In this grainy image, O’Keeffe stands looking up at a painting of flame-like, flaring petals. The caption beneath reads, 'Georgia O'Keeffe and her 'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'' An inset box at the top left reads, 'Dayton Ohio News Sunday February 21 1943.' O’Keeffe wears a black, long-sleeved dress and a black cap that covers her hair. Her features are indistinct in this blurry image but dark brows stand out on her high forehead. She has a long nose, and she smiles slightly. She rests the pinky edge of one hand along the side of the canvas.
Figure 11. Clipping from a Dayton, Ohio newspaper. Sunday, February 21, 1943.
Painting. Most of this picture is taken up by a thick-armed, black cross. A stylized landscape beyond has densely packed, gray and brown hills leading back to a horizon lined with burnt orange and vivid yellow. The crossbeam sits just over the horizon, which comes halfway up the painting. Four round objects, presumably nail heads, are unevenly spaced on the crossing of the beams. The sky above the crossbeam, in the upper corners of the canvas, lightens from powder blue across the top to light yellow above the cross. A white circle near the upper right corner suggests a distant moon or bright star.
Figure 12. Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Cross, New Mexico / Black Cross, 1929. Oil on canvas, 39 x 30 in. Art Institute of Chicago. View on the AIC website.
Black and white photograph. A woman, Georgia O’Keeffe, wears a dark hat and coat as she looks up and to our right, her hands gathered around the button on her high-necked collar at her throat. Her head and hands nearly fill the picture. She has dark eyes, a straight nose with a rounded end, and high cheekbones. Her mouth is closed, and her upper lip is darker than her full lower lip. The hat has a tall crown and short brim, and it comes down to her thick eyebrows and over her ears. The button of her high-collared coat shines as it catches the light. With the hand on our left, she creates an O with her forefinger and thumb as she pinches the button. Her other fingers curl in as her palm turns toward us, so her fingers resemble a cresting wave. The middle finger of that hand also touches the button, and those fingers curve toward her palm, which faces our left. Behind her is an abstract work showing a light-colored, rounded object within a darker field. The round area creates a kind of halo around her head. Her face and hands are slightly out of focus.
Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918. Platinum print, 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Black and white photograph. A white wall with Georgia O’Keeffe’s signature scrawled in black, oversized, cursive letters, takes up the left half of this image. The room beyond is hung with two paintings, and the sliver of an opening leading to another space is barely visible along the right edge. The letters of O’Keeffe’s name are rounded, with the lowercase g and f letters making spikes along its length. One painting in the background is lighter and shows stylized, curving forms; the other painting is dark and difficult to make out.
Figure 1. Installation view of the 1946 exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe at the Museum of Modern Art. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN319.1. Photograph by Soichi Sunami. View on the MoMA website.
Typewritten document. The cream-colored sheet has a press release heading typed in underlined all caps: 'Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe shown in retrospective exhibition at Museum of Modern Art.' The paragraph below is headed with the text in quotation marks, 'Finally a woman on paper.' The paragraph beneath reads, 'These words, spoken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915, were the actual launching of Georgia O’Keeffe on a career that has led to her recognition as a major American artist. On Wednesday, May 15, a retrospective exhibition of her works will open at the Museum of Modern Art and continue through August 25. The exhibition has been selected and installed by James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. Mr. Sweeney has also written the book on O’Keeffe which the Museum will publish concurrently with the exhibition.'
Figure 2. Museum of Modern Art press release (detail), 1946. Full version available for download from the MoMA website.
Handwritten letter. Text is written in grayed ink on cream-white paper, except for a line added near the top in what appears to be pencil. Between two inked lines, that added line reads, in quotes, ‘Finally a woman on paper’ – he said.' The visible text of the letter starts and ends mid-sentences. It reads: 'while before his lips opened – Then he smiled at me and yelled ‘Wolkomitz come here’ – Then he said to me ‘Why they’re genuinely fine things – you say a woman did these – she’s an unusual woman – She’s broad-minded, she’s bigger than most women, but she’s got the sensitive emotions – I’d know'.
Figure 3. Anita Pollitzer to Georgia O’Keeffe, December 31, 1915 (detail). Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Black and white photograph. We look slightly up at O’Keeffe as she stands swathed in a black coat or wrap, wearing a black hat pulled down to just above her brow, against a white, washed-out sky. Shown from the knees up, her body is angled to our right but she turns her face to us. She gazes down her long nose through narrowed eyes, off to our left. Lit from our right, sharp shadow defines the hollow under her high cheekbone on our left. Her lips are set in a line, and she seems to lean a little away from us. Her entire body is hidden behind her black garment. The light gray horizon comes about an eighth of the way up the composition, and the rest of the background is pale sky.
Figure 1. Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1920–22 . Gelatin silver print, 4 1/2 x 3 9/16 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Painting. Rounded forms in cool mint and laurel green, topaz, and cobalt blue flare outward from a dark blue teardrop shape near the top center of this composition and envelop an inverted teardrop shape, in mauve pink, below the first. The rounded, flaring forms extend off all four sides of the composition. The dark blue teardrop is surrounded by a wide ring of aquamarine blue around the top that lightens to seafoam green below. Bands flare out and up, creating peaks to either side of this ring in the same jewel-toned greens and blues. Two larger forms swell out surround the pink teardrop below. A vertical line extends from the lower teardrop to the bottom edge of the painting, splitting the two forms there. Those forms have smaller lobes above the teardrop and are wider below, like bottom-heavy kidney beans. The areas closest to the pink teardrop are frosty green, darkening to spruce and teal green at the edges. Along the top of the composition, the background deepens from shell pink near the flower to dusky-rose pink at the edge. Darker pink fills in the lower corners. Brushstrokes are visible in some areas and more blended in others.
Figure 2. Georgia O’Keeffe. Series I White & Blue Flower Shapes, 1919. Oil on board, 19 7/8 x 15 3/4 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Palladium print. O’Keeffe’s head is at the bottom center of this tall palladium print. In warm tones of golden brown and velvety black, she raises one hand high so it reaches into the upper right corner while the other hand is up near her face, both with palms out. O’Keeffe looks off to our left under dark brows. The outer corners of her eyes and lips turn slightly down. Tendons stand out in her neck, and her long dark hair extends off the bottom edge of the image. Her arm to our left curves up and over her head, dark hair visible in her armpit. That thumb may touch the work of art behind her, which shows a swirling form that grows up the composition in much the same shape as her arm. Her other hand is near her head, palm facing us, with that thumb close to or brushing that ear.
Figure 3. Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918. Palladium print, 9 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the NGA website.
Charcoal drawing. Mostly short horizontal, vertical, and curving black lines interlock to make a mass that runs up the center of the composition, nearly filling the height of this tan-colored paper. A few longer diagonal lines bring the shapes together into an abstracted human form. Some cup-like lines could indicate the person’s head, shoulders, and breasts. Horizontal hatching and smudges fill in or outline the shapes throughout.
Figure 4. Pablo Picasso. Standing Female Nude, 1910. Charcoal on paper, 19 x 12 3/8 in. Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. View on the Met Museum website.
Charcoal drawing. Jagged forms, long, bulb-like shapes, and wavy lines are layered up along the center of this cream-white paper in this vertical drawing. A zig-zagging line to our left is filled in with solid medium gray to make a serrated form. Four tall, finger-like mounds clustered next to it, to our right, are darker, almost black. Some strokes of charcoal are visible, especially on the shape closest to us. Wavy lines create an outline for a form like a river to our right, which is shaded lightly but mostly white. The paper is smudged around the collection of forms.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Drawing XIII, 1915 / No. 13, Special, 1916. Charcoal on paper, 24 3/8 × 18 1/2 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Painting. Two pieces of vivid green fruit sit in a burgundy-red basket, which hovers over or sits on a doily-like form against a carnation-pink field below. The painting is created with mostly flat areas of color, though there is some shading to create a sense of volume in the fruit and basket. The bottom ends of the shamrock-green pears face upward. They sit side-by-side in a long, narrow basket. The handle curves up from the narrow ends. The outside of the basket is dark red, the inside navy blue. A gray shape to our left could be a shadow cast by the basket. The area behind the basket is cream white but an underlayer of cobalt blue shows through in some of the more thinly painted areas. The doily beneath the basket has a scalloped edge. The pink surface below fills the bottom half of the painting and is mottled with a darker shade of pink in the bottom right corner and to our left of the doily.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Alligator Pear - No. 2, 1920–21. Oil on canvas, 23 1/4 x 18 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Watercolor and drawing on paper. Paint is brushed, washed, and scrubbed on the paper in shades of moss and pine green, royal blue, mustard yellow, gray, and brown to create an abstracted view across a grassy ledge onto a body of water beyond. The scene is loosely painted so many details are difficult to make out. An outline of a charcoal-gray square tips into the scene from the bottom right corner, filling most of the paper’s height and width. The grassy hillside closest to us is painted in washes of golden yellow and sage green. It angles down to our left, where another area of peat brown outside the square could be a neighboring hill. A few caramel and tawny brown squiggles in the lower right corner of the watercolor could be an animal. Dark green trees line the hill to our right. Midnight blue, yellow, and brown squiggles to our left on the neighboring hill could be more trees. They are layered over areas of cobalt and topaz blue. The horizon is marked with a coral-red line, and the sky above, in the top fifth of the paper, is washes of pale blue, yellow, and dark gray. The artist signed and dated the bottom right corner, “Marin 22.”
Figure 7. John Marin. From Deer Isle, Maine, 1922. Watercolor, gouache, charcoal, and graphite on wove paper, 16 7/8 x 20 1/16 in. National Gallery of Art, Gift of John Marin Jr. View on the NGA website.
Black and white photograph. O’Keeffe sits on the deep ledge of a window opening and looks at us, one hand raised to the upturned collar of her shirt. The square window opening fills the top three-quarters of the picture, and glass-paned panels open toward us. On our side of the window, O’Keeffe sits on the sill, her crossed legs angled to our right, her back leaning against the left edge of the opening. She turns her oval face to look at us from the corners of her eyes. She pulls her chin back a bit, a faint smile on her lips. Her dark hair is swept loosely up, and it blends with the shadowy room behind her. Her black coat has round buttons down the front and is held loosely in place with a belt. Her long, dark skirt covers her legs to her ankles, above white socks and shoes. Her right hand, to our left and closer to us, rests in her lap. Her other hand is raised to the tall point of her upturned collar, by her left cheek.
Figure 1. Unknown photographer. Georgia O’Keeffe in Texas (detail), between 1912 and 1918. Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, MS.37. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Painting. Three clusters of ash-brown and charcoal-gray, smooth, stylized tree trunks nearly fill this horizontal canvas. The ground below the trees is eggshell white, and blue sky fills in the top half. The surface of the trunks are smooth and curve gently, like bones. Their rounded bases are near the bottom edge of the canvas, and the trunks extend off the top edge. A cluster of three ash-brown trunks is to our left and a gray pair behind it at the center. One larger brown trunk to our right has a band of the white up the lower center, suggesting drifting snow. There are touches of muted brick red around the bottoms of the trunks.
Figure 2. Georgia O’Keeffe. Bare Tree Trunks with Snow, 1946. Oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase. View on the DMA website.
Painting. A single black line swells and tapers in curves across a white canvas like an uneven capital B. In the top left corner, the small top bulb of the B comes to a rounded tip pointing to our right. The second line takes up the vast majority of the composition. It stretches from near the top left corner all the way across to the center of the right edge. It then swells into a thicker line where it curves back toward the lower left corner.
Figure 3. Georgia O’Keeffe. Winter Road I, 1963. Oil on canvas, 22 x 18 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the NGA website.
Painting. A stylized landscape is made up of fog-gray, harvest-yellow, and rose-pink hills leading back to a flat-topped, black mesa in this long, horizontal painting. The gray, yellow, and pink hills take up about the bottom third of the composition. The black mesa takes up more than half the height of the canvas, and two crimson-red streaks rise up the right edge. The sky above is paper white.
Figure 4. Georgia O’Keeffe. Dark Mesa with Pink Sky, 1930. Oil on canvas, 16 x 29 7/8 inches. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Painting. A peanut-brown, flat form spans most of this composition, except for a long, slender white triangle at the top left corner. A tall, narrow black rectangle near the lower left corner suggests a window opening in the side of a building. The brown wall is shaded darker to our left and lightens to tan across the face of the wall to our right. A darker brown strip along the right edge of the canvas suggests the turning of the corner of the building. The sky is washed-out white in the top left.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Patio Door, 1955. Oil on Canvas, 40 1/8 x 30 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Washes in shades of blue and green create a curving, rainbow-like form against the beige of the paper in this vertical sheet. A band of sapphire blue across the bottom has a rounded bottom to create a long, cup-like form. A pale, honeydew-green band curves beneath it. Over the blue form, a light green mound creates the interior of the curving bands that then extend up like a rainbow. The bands deepen from pale green to sage, and then deeper, jewel-toned blues as they rise to the top of the sheet. A field of aquamarine-blue fills in the squared top of the sheet. The bands do not touch so the beige of the sheet shows through. Each band is mottled where the watercolor has feathered and pooled.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. I, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Arching washes of sky, royal, and navy blue blend to create a tall, egg-like shape on beige paper. A shallow, dish-like form of ultramarine blue runs across the bottom of the sheet. Above a narrow gap where the beige paper shows through, the tall form rises up into a dome. A pale glow at the bottom center of that form shifts to arctic blue and then deepens gradually to ultramarine around the top edge. Having worked wet-in-wet, the watercolor blends outward, like the rays of a rising sun. A few darker areas of blue are pooled around the top.
Figure 7. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. II / No. II Light Coming on the Plains, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Here, the arching form of blended bands deepens from pale turquoise at the center to azure blue and then muted plum purple, again on beige-colored paper. The cup-like band across the bottom fades from royal blue to eggplant brown, then mint green. The blue and purple swirl together, especially across the top of the rounded form at the top of the page.
Figure 8. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. III / No. III Light Coming on the Plains, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Warm orange and red rings surround a yellow ring near the upper left corner. The rest of the field is filled with pools of shades of lapis blue. The yellow circle is near the upper left corner. The white of the unpainted paper separates it from the clay-orange ring surrounding it, which is then encircled in a red ring. A tail-like line extends from the outer, red ring to stretch to the right edge of the paper. The blue paint of the sky touches the red ring along the left edge and near the red line so blue and red bleed together in those two areas. The blue areas are especially mottled with wet-on-wet blue pigment.
Figure 9. Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No. V, 1917. Watercolor on paper, 8 5/8 x 11 5/8 in. McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Helen Miller Jones. View on the McNay website.
Watercolor. Clouds of white smoke highlighted with lemon yellow and shaded with delphinium blue billow out of an upside-down teardrop shape that could be a train on a track in this abstracted composition. The cloud takes up most of the top two-thirds of the vertical sheet. The teardrop shape, or train, is dark blue and has a yellow circle, presumably a headlight, is just to our left of center. Three lines emanate from the point of the train and extend to our left. One band is olive green, one is rust orange, and the third is royal blue. Washes of watercolor around the train and cloud lightens from violet across the top to pale slate blue along the bottom edge.
Figure 10. Georgia O’Keeffe. Train Coming in - Canyon, Texas / Train at Night in the Desert, 1916. Watercolor on paper, 9 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. Amarillo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Amarillo Area Foundation, AMoA Alliance, Fannie Weymouth, Santa Fe Industries Foundation and Mary Fain.
Painting. A jagged, rounded form like a circular saw blade blends from honey and canary yellow to marigold orange and scarlet red in this long, horizontal painting. A band of brown along the bottom edge is topped by narrower bands of flame red and orange. The rest of the canvas is taken up with serrated bands of orange and yellow flaring off of a honey-yellow semicircle along the horizon. The semicircle is mottled with darker areas of pumpkin orange. The upper corners are vivid red.t
Figure 11. Georgia O’Keeffe. From the Plains I / From the Plains, 1953. Oil on canvas, 47 11/16 x 83 5/8 in. McNay Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Tom Slick. View on the McNay website.
Painting. A white, dry goat’s skull sits on a sandy dune in the lower left corner of this vertical painting. Two dunes rise in the distance beyond, nearly filling the composition. The skull is painted parchment white shaded with pale lavender purple. An undefined, curling tuft near the head could be the remnants of the goat’s skin or fur. The skull is angled to our right, almost in profile. Sun washes the sandy area beyond the skull in golden yellow. The dune that curves up and to our right is darker, army brown. Another sunlit dune fills the top left corner. A sliver of pale pink sky stretches across the top edge of the canvas.
Figure 12. Georgia O’Keeffe. Goat’s Head, 1957. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in. McNay Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Tom Slick. View on the McNay website.
Painting. Curving forms in pale peach, orange, eucalyptus green, fawn brown, mauve pink, and deep purple intertwine around an ear-like form, ridged and curling, at the bottom center in this abstract painting. At the core, a muted orange band curves around and through a kidney-shaped green form. Other bands curl and loop out from there. The bands intersect and cross each other, like fingers loosely interlocking to make a cage. The space seems to flatten out at the upper right, where the dark purple deepens to nearly black.
Figure 13. Georgia O’Keeffe. Leaf Motif, No. 2, 1924. Oil on canvas, 35 x 18 in. McNay Art Museum, Mary and Sylvan Lang Collection. View on the McNay website.
Painting. A vibrant yellow, egg-shaped form is surrounded in bands of apricot and saffron orange. The egg tips up and to our right. Along the top, left, and bottom edges, it seems cushioned into a field of a darker orange, which is painted with blended strokes to give it a soft look. The orange fades to white at the top right corner and down the right side. In the top left corner, a magenta-pink, bean-shaped form is nestled into a lighter peach area. Two lines of deep pink stretch from the bean form, like blood vessels.
Figure 14. Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in. Extended Loan, Private Collection.
Thoma Foundation Logo
Typewritten document. The press release heading is printed with red ink. The only legible line there reads, in the largest letters, 'News Release from the Art Institute of Chicago.' Below, a line in black, all caps reads, 'Three important exhibitions,' and then, a little farther down, 'Georgia O'Keeffe comes to Chicago.' Typewriter text fills the rest of the sheet. A 'note' near the top reads, 'A midwinter group of exhibitions opens January 21 in the East Wing Galleries headlined by the largest retrospective showing of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe ever held. Also included: Religious Folk Art of the Spanish Southwest: and Recent Acquisitions.' The body of the press release reads, 'Miss O’Keeffe, a former student of the school of the Art Institute, and at present the most famous woman painter in the world, is coming to Chicago to direct the installation of her exhibition and to be present at the opening. This is the first retrospective exhibition of her work to be shown in any museum. Sixty-one different pictures will trace the development of her art chronologically from 1916 until today. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Miss O’Keeffe has lived in Chicago, New York, Texas, and the Southwest. Her painting is noted for its luminous, unconventional color and its simplified imaginative use of form.' A subheading reads, also in all caps, 'O'Keeffe pictures bring extremely high prices.' Text continues, 'Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings command higher prices than those of any other living woman. As much as $10,000 has been paid for one painting by her, and this despite the fact that she is completely independent in her approach to her material. In 1923 she wrote the following: ‘One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself – I can’t live where I want to – I can’t go where I want to – I can’t do what I want to – I can’t even say what I want to – . I decided I am a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.’' Creases where the sheet had been folded in thirds are visible.
Figure 1. Art Institute of Chicago press release, January 11, 1943.
Black and white photograph. A cleanshaven man wearing a suit and with a rounded face looks just off to our right with dark eyes in this portrait. His shoulders and face are angled to our right. He has a high forehead, low brows, and a rounded nose and chin. Light glints off his short, dark hair. He wears a suit jacket, a striped button-up shirt, and a diamond-patterned tie.
Figure 2. Daniel Catton Rich, 1939.
Handwritten letter. The letterhead at the top center of the sheet shows a rooster standing atop a crest, with three smaller roosters in a row within. Beneath the shield-shaped crest is a banner that reads, 'The Blackstone.' Under that is printed, 'Chicago' O’Keeffe’s pencil-written letter is below. Her writing is a little choppy with pronounced loops for lowercase letters h, l, and d. Text reads, 'Another day gone – it is Friday night I’ve been up most of the day – wanted to go out but didn’t – I even put a dress on – Maria came for an hour this morning and again at 5 – for supper and left a little after 8 – Narcissa came for half an hour with her husband this evening – Maria says there must have been over 400 people there today – they all agree that everyone feels it'.
Figure 3. Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, January 23, 1943. Letters to Alfred Stieglitz, MS.9. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Watercolor. Two slender lines with tapering, sharply pointed tips extend up from a pool of ink blue in this abstract vertical painting on bone-white paper. A broad smudge of dark blue spans most of the bottom edge of the sheet. The two lines emerge close together from just right of center. The line on the left stretches about two-thirds of the way up the sheet before angling downward, and then back up in a sideways z-shaped zigzag. The vertical line next to it nearly reaches the top edge of the sheet. Both swell and then taper back down near their tips.
Figure 4. Georgia O’Keeffe. Blue Lines X / Blue Lines, 1916. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 25 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Charcoal drawing. Jagged forms, long, bulb-like shapes, and wavy lines are layered up along the center of this cream-white paper in this vertical drawing. A zig-zagging line to our left is filled in with solid medium gray to make a serrated form. Four tall, finger-like mounds clustered next to it, to our right, are darker, almost black. Some strokes of charcoal are visible, especially on the shape closest to us. Wavy lines create an outline for a form like a river to our right, which is shaded lightly but mostly white. The paper is smudged around the collection of forms.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Drawing XIII, 1915 / No. 13, Special, 1916. Charcoal on paper, 24 3/8 x 18 1/2 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Painting. Rust-red, barren hills fill most of this picture. Two dried bones span the bottom edge of the painting close to us, and goldenrod-yellow cliffs fill in the background. A thick, long bone with curved ends sits to our left, just in front of a spine with ten vertebrae. They sit on a low, wine-red hill. The valley leading back to the hill beyond is carpeted in patches of sky blue, white, and pale green. That hill takes up about two-thirds of the picture. Its smooth surface is lined with crevices, and there is a band of lighter orange near the bottom. In the top quarter of the composition, loosely painted strokes of deep yellow, coral pink, lilac purple, terracotta orange, and a few touches of pale turquoise suggest more rocky outcroppings and cliffs.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Red Hills and Bones, 1941. Oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 40 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the PMA website.
Painting. A shiny, round-bellied black vase holds three feathers striped with brown, black, and white, all against a sand-brown background. Light glints off the round body of the vase, which takes up two-thirds the height of this painting. Only the white tip of one feather pokes over the top edge of the vase. More of the light brown and black stripes are visible on the two feathers behind it. A triangular form in the lower right corner and a vertical band running up the canvas, about a quarter of the way in from the right edge, suggest that the vase is tucked into a niche or the corner of a wall.
Figure 7. Georgia O’Keeffe. Turkey Feathers and Indian Pot, 1941. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.
Black and white photograph. Eleven widely spaced paintings line the walls of a long room in this installation view. Through a squared opening at the end of the room opposite us, at least three more doorways telescope into the distance, ending in a flat wall at the far end of the building. The room we are in has a double-sided wooden bench at the center beneath a grid of lights above, which reflects off the shiny dark floor. The paintings show flaring petals or antlers, or layers of geometric shapes.
Figure 8. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white photograph. We look into the far corner of a gallery space, with nine paintings lining the walls to either side of an opening, near the far corner. The paintings show flame-like petals, an animal skull, or abstracted, geometric shapes. The grid of lights above reflects in the dark, shiny floor below. In this view, we see three wooden benches placed along the perimeter of the room.
Figure 9. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white photograph. This room has an opening at the far end, and walls angle inward across the corners to either side of it. Ten paintings are hung along a textured wall that appears gray in this photograph. The paintings show abstracted or stylized trees, mountains, skulls, or layered shapes. With the grid of lights above and the dark floor below, we look into at least three more rooms, barely visible to either side of the nested doorways.
Figure 10. Exhibition installation photo, Art Institute of Chicago, 1943.
Black and white newspaper clipping. In this grainy image, O’Keeffe stands looking up at a painting of flame-like, flaring petals. The caption beneath reads, 'Georgia O'Keeffe and her 'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'' An inset box at the top left reads, 'Dayton Ohio News Sunday February 21 1943.' O’Keeffe wears a black, long-sleeved dress and a black cap that covers her hair. Her features are indistinct in this blurry image but dark brows stand out on her high forehead. She has a long nose, and she smiles slightly. She rests the pinky edge of one hand along the side of the canvas.
Figure 11. Clipping from a Dayton, Ohio newspaper. Sunday, February 21, 1943.
Painting. Most of this picture is taken up by a thick-armed, black cross. A stylized landscape beyond has densely packed, gray and brown hills leading back to a horizon lined with burnt orange and vivid yellow. The crossbeam sits just over the horizon, which comes halfway up the painting. Four round objects, presumably nail heads, are unevenly spaced on the crossing of the beams. The sky above the crossbeam, in the upper corners of the canvas, lightens from powder blue across the top to light yellow above the cross. A white circle near the upper right corner suggests a distant moon or bright star.
Figure 12. Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Cross, New Mexico / Black Cross, 1929. Oil on canvas, 39 x 30 in. Art Institute of Chicago. View on the AIC website.
Black and white photograph. A woman, Georgia O’Keeffe, wears a dark hat and coat as she looks up and to our right, her hands gathered around the button on her high-necked collar at her throat. Her head and hands nearly fill the picture. She has dark eyes, a straight nose with a rounded end, and high cheekbones. Her mouth is closed, and her upper lip is darker than her full lower lip. The hat has a tall crown and short brim, and it comes down to her thick eyebrows and over her ears. The button of her high-collared coat shines as it catches the light. With the hand on our left, she creates an O with her forefinger and thumb as she pinches the button. Her other fingers curl in as her palm turns toward us, so her fingers resemble a cresting wave. The middle finger of that hand also touches the button, and those fingers curve toward her palm, which faces our left. Behind her is an abstract work showing a light-colored, rounded object within a darker field. The round area creates a kind of halo around her head. Her face and hands are slightly out of focus.
Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918. Platinum print, 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Black and white photograph. We look slightly up at O’Keeffe as she stands swathed in a black coat or wrap, wearing a black hat pulled down to just above her brow, against a white, washed-out sky. Shown from the knees up, her body is angled to our right but she turns her face to us. She gazes down her long nose through narrowed eyes, off to our left. Lit from our right, sharp shadow defines the hollow under her high cheekbone on our left. Her lips are set in a line, and she seems to lean a little away from us. Her entire body is hidden behind her black garment. The light gray horizon comes about an eighth of the way up the composition, and the rest of the background is pale sky.
Figure 1. Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1920–22 . Gelatin silver print, 4 1/2 x 3 9/16 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Painting. Rounded forms in cool mint and laurel green, topaz, and cobalt blue flare outward from a dark blue teardrop shape near the top center of this composition and envelop an inverted teardrop shape, in mauve pink, below the first. The rounded, flaring forms extend off all four sides of the composition. The dark blue teardrop is surrounded by a wide ring of aquamarine blue around the top that lightens to seafoam green below. Bands flare out and up, creating peaks to either side of this ring in the same jewel-toned greens and blues. Two larger forms swell out surround the pink teardrop below. A vertical line extends from the lower teardrop to the bottom edge of the painting, splitting the two forms there. Those forms have smaller lobes above the teardrop and are wider below, like bottom-heavy kidney beans. The areas closest to the pink teardrop are frosty green, darkening to spruce and teal green at the edges. Along the top of the composition, the background deepens from shell pink near the flower to dusky-rose pink at the edge. Darker pink fills in the lower corners. Brushstrokes are visible in some areas and more blended in others.
Figure 2. Georgia O’Keeffe. Series I White & Blue Flower Shapes, 1919. Oil on board, 19 7/8 x 15 3/4 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Palladium print. O’Keeffe’s head is at the bottom center of this tall palladium print. In warm tones of golden brown and velvety black, she raises one hand high so it reaches into the upper right corner while the other hand is up near her face, both with palms out. O’Keeffe looks off to our left under dark brows. The outer corners of her eyes and lips turn slightly down. Tendons stand out in her neck, and her long dark hair extends off the bottom edge of the image. Her arm to our left curves up and over her head, dark hair visible in her armpit. That thumb may touch the work of art behind her, which shows a swirling form that grows up the composition in much the same shape as her arm. Her other hand is near her head, palm facing us, with that thumb close to or brushing that ear.
Figure 3. Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1918. Palladium print, 9 3/8 x 6 3/8 in. National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the NGA website.
Charcoal drawing. Mostly short horizontal, vertical, and curving black lines interlock to make a mass that runs up the center of the composition, nearly filling the height of this tan-colored paper. A few longer diagonal lines bring the shapes together into an abstracted human form. Some cup-like lines could indicate the person’s head, shoulders, and breasts. Horizontal hatching and smudges fill in or outline the shapes throughout.
Figure 4. Pablo Picasso. Standing Female Nude, 1910. Charcoal on paper, 19 x 12 3/8 in. Collection The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. © 2022 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. View on the Met Museum website.
Charcoal drawing. Jagged forms, long, bulb-like shapes, and wavy lines are layered up along the center of this cream-white paper in this vertical drawing. A zig-zagging line to our left is filled in with solid medium gray to make a serrated form. Four tall, finger-like mounds clustered next to it, to our right, are darker, almost black. Some strokes of charcoal are visible, especially on the shape closest to us. Wavy lines create an outline for a form like a river to our right, which is shaded lightly but mostly white. The paper is smudged around the collection of forms.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Drawing XIII, 1915 / No. 13, Special, 1916. Charcoal on paper, 24 3/8 × 18 1/2 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. View on the Met Museum website.
Painting. Two pieces of vivid green fruit sit in a burgundy-red basket, which hovers over or sits on a doily-like form against a carnation-pink field below. The painting is created with mostly flat areas of color, though there is some shading to create a sense of volume in the fruit and basket. The bottom ends of the shamrock-green pears face upward. They sit side-by-side in a long, narrow basket. The handle curves up from the narrow ends. The outside of the basket is dark red, the inside navy blue. A gray shape to our left could be a shadow cast by the basket. The area behind the basket is cream white but an underlayer of cobalt blue shows through in some of the more thinly painted areas. The doily beneath the basket has a scalloped edge. The pink surface below fills the bottom half of the painting and is mottled with a darker shade of pink in the bottom right corner and to our left of the doily.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Alligator Pear - No. 2, 1920–21. Oil on canvas, 23 1/4 x 18 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Watercolor and drawing on paper. Paint is brushed, washed, and scrubbed on the paper in shades of moss and pine green, royal blue, mustard yellow, gray, and brown to create an abstracted view across a grassy ledge onto a body of water beyond. The scene is loosely painted so many details are difficult to make out. An outline of a charcoal-gray square tips into the scene from the bottom right corner, filling most of the paper’s height and width. The grassy hillside closest to us is painted in washes of golden yellow and sage green. It angles down to our left, where another area of peat brown outside the square could be a neighboring hill. A few caramel and tawny brown squiggles in the lower right corner of the watercolor could be an animal. Dark green trees line the hill to our right. Midnight blue, yellow, and brown squiggles to our left on the neighboring hill could be more trees. They are layered over areas of cobalt and topaz blue. The horizon is marked with a coral-red line, and the sky above, in the top fifth of the paper, is washes of pale blue, yellow, and dark gray. The artist signed and dated the bottom right corner, “Marin 22.”
Figure 7. John Marin. From Deer Isle, Maine, 1922. Watercolor, gouache, charcoal, and graphite on wove paper, 16 7/8 x 20 1/16 in. National Gallery of Art, Gift of John Marin Jr. View on the NGA website.
Black and white photograph. A white wall with Georgia O’Keeffe’s signature scrawled in black, oversized, cursive letters, takes up the left half of this image. The room beyond is hung with two paintings, and the sliver of an opening leading to another space is barely visible along the right edge. The letters of O’Keeffe’s name are rounded, with the lowercase g and f letters making spikes along its length. One painting in the background is lighter and shows stylized, curving forms; the other painting is dark and difficult to make out.
Figure 1. Installation view of the 1946 exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe at the Museum of Modern Art. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN319.1. Photograph by Soichi Sunami. View on the MoMA website.
Typewritten document. The cream-colored sheet has a press release heading typed in underlined all caps: 'Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe shown in retrospective exhibition at Museum of Modern Art.' The paragraph below is headed with the text in quotation marks, 'Finally a woman on paper.' The paragraph beneath reads, 'These words, spoken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915, were the actual launching of Georgia O’Keeffe on a career that has led to her recognition as a major American artist. On Wednesday, May 15, a retrospective exhibition of her works will open at the Museum of Modern Art and continue through August 25. The exhibition has been selected and installed by James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture. Mr. Sweeney has also written the book on O’Keeffe which the Museum will publish concurrently with the exhibition.'
Figure 2. Museum of Modern Art press release (detail), 1946. Full version available for download from the MoMA website.
Handwritten letter. Text is written in grayed ink on cream-white paper, except for a line added near the top in what appears to be pencil. Between two inked lines, that added line reads, in quotes, ‘Finally a woman on paper’ – he said.' The visible text of the letter starts and ends mid-sentences. It reads: 'while before his lips opened – Then he smiled at me and yelled ‘Wolkomitz come here’ – Then he said to me ‘Why they’re genuinely fine things – you say a woman did these – she’s an unusual woman – She’s broad-minded, she’s bigger than most women, but she’s got the sensitive emotions – I’d know'.
Figure 3. Anita Pollitzer to Georgia O’Keeffe, December 31, 1915 (detail). Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O’Keeffe Archive. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Black and white photograph. O’Keeffe sits on the deep ledge of a window opening and looks at us, one hand raised to the upturned collar of her shirt. The square window opening fills the top three-quarters of the picture, and glass-paned panels open toward us. On our side of the window, O’Keeffe sits on the sill, her crossed legs angled to our right, her back leaning against the left edge of the opening. She turns her oval face to look at us from the corners of her eyes. She pulls her chin back a bit, a faint smile on her lips. Her dark hair is swept loosely up, and it blends with the shadowy room behind her. Her black coat has round buttons down the front and is held loosely in place with a belt. Her long, dark skirt covers her legs to her ankles, above white socks and shoes. Her right hand, to our left and closer to us, rests in her lap. Her other hand is raised to the tall point of her upturned collar, by her left cheek.
Figure 1. Unknown photographer. Georgia O’Keeffe in Texas (detail), between 1912 and 1918. Georgia O’Keeffe Photographs, MS.37. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. View on the O’Keeffe Museum website.
Painting. Three clusters of ash-brown and charcoal-gray, smooth, stylized tree trunks nearly fill this horizontal canvas. The ground below the trees is eggshell white, and blue sky fills in the top half. The surface of the trunks are smooth and curve gently, like bones. Their rounded bases are near the bottom edge of the canvas, and the trunks extend off the top edge. A cluster of three ash-brown trunks is to our left and a gray pair behind it at the center. One larger brown trunk to our right has a band of the white up the lower center, suggesting drifting snow. There are touches of muted brick red around the bottoms of the trunks.
Figure 2. Georgia O’Keeffe. Bare Tree Trunks with Snow, 1946. Oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase. View on the DMA website.
Painting. A single black line swells and tapers in curves across a white canvas like an uneven capital B. In the top left corner, the small top bulb of the B comes to a rounded tip pointing to our right. The second line takes up the vast majority of the composition. It stretches from near the top left corner all the way across to the center of the right edge. It then swells into a thicker line where it curves back toward the lower left corner.
Figure 3. Georgia O’Keeffe. Winter Road I, 1963. Oil on canvas, 22 x 18 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. View on the NGA website.
Painting. A stylized landscape is made up of fog-gray, harvest-yellow, and rose-pink hills leading back to a flat-topped, black mesa in this long, horizontal painting. The gray, yellow, and pink hills take up about the bottom third of the composition. The black mesa takes up more than half the height of the canvas, and two crimson-red streaks rise up the right edge. The sky above is paper white.
Figure 4. Georgia O’Keeffe. Dark Mesa with Pink Sky, 1930. Oil on canvas, 16 x 29 7/8 inches. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Painting. A peanut-brown, flat form spans most of this composition, except for a long, slender white triangle at the top left corner. A tall, narrow black rectangle near the lower left corner suggests a window opening in the side of a building. The brown wall is shaded darker to our left and lightens to tan across the face of the wall to our right. A darker brown strip along the right edge of the canvas suggests the turning of the corner of the building. The sky is washed-out white in the top left.
Figure 5. Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Patio Door, 1955. Oil on Canvas, 40 1/8 x 30 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Washes in shades of blue and green create a curving, rainbow-like form against the beige of the paper in this vertical sheet. A band of sapphire blue across the bottom has a rounded bottom to create a long, cup-like form. A pale, honeydew-green band curves beneath it. Over the blue form, a light green mound creates the interior of the curving bands that then extend up like a rainbow. The bands deepen from pale green to sage, and then deeper, jewel-toned blues as they rise to the top of the sheet. A field of aquamarine-blue fills in the squared top of the sheet. The bands do not touch so the beige of the sheet shows through. Each band is mottled where the watercolor has feathered and pooled.
Figure 6. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. I, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Arching washes of sky, royal, and navy blue blend to create a tall, egg-like shape on beige paper. A shallow, dish-like form of ultramarine blue runs across the bottom of the sheet. Above a narrow gap where the beige paper shows through, the tall form rises up into a dome. A pale glow at the bottom center of that form shifts to arctic blue and then deepens gradually to ultramarine around the top edge. Having worked wet-in-wet, the watercolor blends outward, like the rays of a rising sun. A few darker areas of blue are pooled around the top.
Figure 7. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. II / No. II Light Coming on the Plains, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Here, the arching form of blended bands deepens from pale turquoise at the center to azure blue and then muted plum purple, again on beige-colored paper. The cup-like band across the bottom fades from royal blue to eggplant brown, then mint green. The blue and purple swirl together, especially across the top of the rounded form at the top of the page.
Figure 8. Georgia O’Keeffe. Light Coming on the Plains No. III / No. III Light Coming on the Plains, 1917. Watercolor on thin, beige, smooth wove paper and newsprint, 11 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art. View on the Amon Carter website.
Watercolor. Warm orange and red rings surround a yellow ring near the upper left corner. The rest of the field is filled with pools of shades of lapis blue. The yellow circle is near the upper left corner. The white of the unpainted paper separates it from the clay-orange ring surrounding it, which is then encircled in a red ring. A tail-like line extends from the outer, red ring to stretch to the right edge of the paper. The blue paint of the sky touches the red ring along the left edge and near the red line so blue and red bleed together in those two areas. The blue areas are especially mottled with wet-on-wet blue pigment.
Figure 9. Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No. V, 1917. Watercolor on paper, 8 5/8 x 11 5/8 in. McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Helen Miller Jones. View on the McNay website.
Watercolor. Clouds of white smoke highlighted with lemon yellow and shaded with delphinium blue billow out of an upside-down teardrop shape that could be a train on a track in this abstracted composition. The cloud takes up most of the top two-thirds of the vertical sheet. The teardrop shape, or train, is dark blue and has a yellow circle, presumably a headlight, is just to our left of center. Three lines emanate from the point of the train and extend to our left. One band is olive green, one is rust orange, and the third is royal blue. Washes of watercolor around the train and cloud lightens from violet across the top to pale slate blue along the bottom edge.
Figure 10. Georgia O’Keeffe. Train Coming in - Canyon, Texas / Train at Night in the Desert, 1916. Watercolor on paper, 9 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. Amarillo Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Amarillo Area Foundation, AMoA Alliance, Fannie Weymouth, Santa Fe Industries Foundation and Mary Fain.
Painting. A jagged, rounded form like a circular saw blade blends from honey and canary yellow to marigold orange and scarlet red in this long, horizontal painting. A band of brown along the bottom edge is topped by narrower bands of flame red and orange. The rest of the canvas is taken up with serrated bands of orange and yellow flaring off of a honey-yellow semicircle along the horizon. The semicircle is mottled with darker areas of pumpkin orange. The upper corners are vivid red.t
Figure 11. Georgia O’Keeffe. From the Plains I / From the Plains, 1953. Oil on canvas, 47 11/16 x 83 5/8 in. McNay Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Tom Slick. View on the McNay website.
Painting. A white, dry goat’s skull sits on a sandy dune in the lower left corner of this vertical painting. Two dunes rise in the distance beyond, nearly filling the composition. The skull is painted parchment white shaded with pale lavender purple. An undefined, curling tuft near the head could be the remnants of the goat’s skin or fur. The skull is angled to our right, almost in profile. Sun washes the sandy area beyond the skull in golden yellow. The dune that curves up and to our right is darker, army brown. Another sunlit dune fills the top left corner. A sliver of pale pink sky stretches across the top edge of the canvas.
Figure 12. Georgia O’Keeffe. Goat’s Head, 1957. Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in. McNay Art Museum, Gift of the Estate of Tom Slick. View on the McNay website.
Painting. Curving forms in pale peach, orange, eucalyptus green, fawn brown, mauve pink, and deep purple intertwine around an ear-like form, ridged and curling, at the bottom center in this abstract painting. At the core, a muted orange band curves around and through a kidney-shaped green form. Other bands curl and loop out from there. The bands intersect and cross each other, like fingers loosely interlocking to make a cage. The space seems to flatten out at the upper right, where the dark purple deepens to nearly black.
Figure 13. Georgia O’Keeffe. Leaf Motif, No. 2, 1924. Oil on canvas, 35 x 18 in. McNay Art Museum, Mary and Sylvan Lang Collection. View on the McNay website.
Painting. A vibrant yellow, egg-shaped form is surrounded in bands of apricot and saffron orange. The egg tips up and to our right. Along the top, left, and bottom edges, it seems cushioned into a field of a darker orange, which is painted with blended strokes to give it a soft look. The orange fades to white at the top right corner and down the right side. In the top left corner, a magenta-pink, bean-shaped form is nestled into a lighter peach area. Two lines of deep pink stretch from the bean form, like blood vessels.
Figure 14. Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in. Extended Loan, Private Collection.
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