O'Keeffe, Georgia

Important group of five autograph letters signed, 13 pages various sizes, Lake George and New York City, 22 October 1925 to 1 March 1927 (postmarks), to Erma (Mrs. Ernest W.) Stix, regarding the purchase of a painting and the proper frame; with autograph envelopes. Accompanied by: Alfred Stieglitz. Four autograph letters signed, 7 pages (11 x 8 1/2 in.; 278 x 215 mm), New York City, 25 February 1926 to 15 March 1926, to Erma (Mrs. Ernest Stix), regarding the purchase and  framing of the O'Keeffe painting discussed in her letters herewith; with autograph envelopes;  two exhibition brochures from The Intimate Gallery: Room 303 at the Anderson Galleries, a news clipping about O'Keeffe and an additional envelope addressed by Stieglitz postmarked 9 January 1928.

Descended  in the Stix family to the present owner

Correspondence with an early patron. In 1925, Erma Stix purchased a painting from Georgia O'Keeffe and a correspondence  ensued with both O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. In her letter postmarked  20 May 1925, O'Keeffe explains her delay in writing by noting Stieglitz's bout with kidney stones and problems with samples of frame moldings. She writes: "If you want to send  my painting that you have and have it in New York  by the time I get there I will have it framed  for you immediately and try to get it back to you a  week or two before Xmas. I couldn't have had  it framed in the spring because I just couldn't get them to make the frames the way I wanted them." Her letter postmarked 20 May 1926, provides insights on the painting purchased by Mrs. Stix: "I have no title for it except that  it is painted from birch trees. They bend over the lake and  I used  to go out in the boat at sunrise to catch them pink with the light low . . . ." Subsequent letters mention the silver frame selected and the success of her exhibitions in New York. Mrs. Stix purchased Birch Trees at  Dawn on Lake George, 1925 and gifted the painting to the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1964. Of the painting, Stieglitz remarks in his letter of 1 March 1926: "I wonder do you know that you have one of the finest (grandest) pictures? I am glad you are  to have it. I am telling  no one the price paid for the reason you asked me not to—& secondly because I let  it go for considerably less than quoted to any one else. But that is all right, O'Keeffe & I are delighted to know it will be in the best of hands."