Georgia O'Keeffe 1887-1986

Alfred Stieglitz, New York
Mrs. Charles J. Liebman, New York, 1929 (sold: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, December 7, 1955, lot 61, illustrated)
The Downtown Gallery, New York
Mrs. John Bryce, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert H. Kinney, New York (purchased through Joan T. Washburn, New York), 1976
Gift to the present owners from the above 
 

New York, The Anderson Galleries, Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs & Things, Recent & Never Before Publicly Shown, by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, March 1925, no. 121 (as Petunia No. 1)
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Summer Exhibition, Painting and Sculpture and Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans, June 1930-January 1931
New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Summer Exhibition From the Museum Collection and On Loan, June-November 1937
Washington, D.C., The Phillips Collection; New York, IBM Gallery of Science and Arts; Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Houston, Texas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Two Lives: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs, December 1992-December 1993, p. 135, illustrated in color, p. 95 

Nicholas Callaway, Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1987, no. 13, illustrated in color
Jeffrey Schaire, "Georgia O'Keeffe in Love," Arts & Antiques, 1987, pp.61-72, 104-105, illustrated in color p. 63
Sarah Whitaker Peters, Becoming O'Keeffe, New York, 1991, no. 132, p. 265, illustrated in color, p. 268
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New Haven, Connecticut, 1999, no. 463, p. 252 , illustrated in color

Throughout her career, Georgia O’Keeffe chose physical objects from nature—trees, flowers, leaves, animal bones and mountains—as subjects for her paintings. As early as 1918, the artist painted a series of canna blossoms in watercolor, but it was in 1924 that O’Keeffe executed her first magnified flowers on a monumental scale.  These powerful and highly evocative works cemented her reputation as one of the most innovative American artists of the 20^th century and were to become the images most closely associated with the artist.

Lloyd Goodrich and Doris Bry observe, “The sensuous beauty of flowers, their miracles of shapes, textures and colors, have seldom been given such intense expression in painting as in these magnified flower pictures.  By enormously enlarging the flower she transformed it, gave it not only a new dimension but a kind of new existence.  Magnification enabled her to reveal its structure with complete clarity.  The flower became a world in itself, a microcosm.  Magnification was another kind of abstraction, of separating the object from ordinary reality, and endowing it with a life of its own” (Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 1970, p. 18).

When Alfred Stieglitz, whom O’Keeffe married in December 1924, first saw one of her magnified flower paintings, he is reported to have said, “Well, Georgia, I don’t know how you’re going to get away with anything like that—you aren’t planning to show it, are you?”  Nevertheless, Petunia and Coleus was included in Stieglitz’s 1925 landmark exhibition at the Anderson Galleries in New York: Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven Americans, which also included works by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz.   In the accompanying catalogue Stieglitz wrote:  “This exhibition is an integral part of my life.  The work exhibited is now shown for the first time.  Most of it has been produced within the last year.  The pictures are now an integral part of their makers.  That I know.  Are the pictures of their makers an integral part of the America of today?  That I am still endeavoring to know."  The following year, Stieglitz mounted a solo exhibition of O’Keeffe’s work at his newly formed Intimate Gallery: her monumental flowers caused an overwhelming sensation among both the critics and the public.  A reviewer for Art News wrote in 1926, “Her Petunias grow in richness, intensity, in volume. . . . Never sang an individual petunia with the rich fullness of that flower.” 

Nicholas Calloway observes, “Added to the shock of their spectacular size, outrageous color, and scandalous (or sacred) shapes was the fact that these paintings had been created by a woman at a time when the art world was almost exclusively male.  O’Keeffe had already attracted attention in the two earlier exhibits of her work at 291, and in Stieglitz’s composite photographic portrait of her, including many nudes, first shown in 1921.  The flower paintings further fueled the public’s fascination with this woman who so freely exposed herself, and yet retained so much mystery.  They were extraordinarily controversial and sought-after, and made their maker a celebrity” (Georgia O’Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1987, n.p.).

With its bold combination of pale pink, vibrant green and purple-tinged black, Petunia and Coleus exemplifies O’Keeffe’s growing preoccupation with daring color and form.  The artist’s tendency toward abstraction appears to have been a conscious one—while her vision was still tempered by vestiges of realism, she pressed on toward something more individual.  To abstract was to intensify, which was for O’Keeffe an emotional necessity.  She wrote: “From experience of one kind or another shapes and colors come to me very clearly.  Sometimes I start in very realistic fashion and as I go on from one painting [to] another of the same thing, it becomes simplified till it can be nothing but abstract, but for me it is my reason for painting, I suppose.”

O'Keeffe's flower paintings of the 1920's are among the most innovative and original contributions to early 20th century American art and to the ongoing discourse of modern art later in the century.  Elizabeth Glassman observes, "Her art does not represent an age gone by, but rather, the brilliance of an American painter whose intuitions remain as provocative today as they were when her work was exhibited by Alfred Stieglitz on the walls of 291" (Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, New Haven, Connecticut, 1993, p. 11).