NEW YORK, NY.- “Oh, by the way, there's a Georgia O'Keeffe in the closet.”
Those words—casually uttered recently by an “extremely private” and “incredibly accomplished” woman to a relative in her Manhattan apartment—led to the rediscovery of a long-lost Georgia O'Keeffe landscape that will now be seen publicly for the first time in at least three decades.
Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I (in the region of $3 million), a 1930 O'Keeffe painting depicting the New Mexico landscape that would occupy her artistic imagination for the rest of her storied career, will be presented as part of Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on November 17. The work will be a highlight of Christie's New York Marquee Week, which includes the collections of Clive Davis, Herbert Lust, Antonio Homem Sonnabend, and others.
The public can view the O'Keeffe and all works offered during Marquee Week in a free, public exhibition at Christie's New York at 20 Rockefeller Center from November 7 until November 17.
“This is a wonderful painting, a remarkable story, and extraordinary opportunity for collectors and the general public alike,” said Tylee Abbott, Senior Specialist and International Director of American Art at Christie's. “Rediscoveries are rare in the well-established market for academically researched and highly revered historic American artists. To uncover a seminal work, representative of this 20th Century master's deep personal engagement with the landscape, a pillar of her career, which is exquisitely rendered and well preserved, is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and absolutely thrilling.”
The Discovery
Earlier this year, the owner of the painting invited her niece to her East Village apartment to help go through her belongings and get her affairs in order. Her family—which requested anonymity—described the woman as “worldly,” “sophisticated,” “ultra intelligent,” “brave,” strong” and “independent.” They shared that she had lived an incredible life: graduating from several prestigious academic institutions, achieving the highest-ever score on the Civil Service Exam at the time, travelling widely as part of the Foreign Service with a fluency in at least four languages, and accomplished as a world-ranked bridge master.
Her niece also knew that she collected art, but she was shocked when her aunt casually mentioned that a work by one of the most celebrated artists in American history, Georgia O'Keeffe, was in her front closet.
Her niece dug through the front closet, where, behind dozens of coats, she found an old wooden box. Inside was the 10-inch x 24-inch work Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, with the artist's “OK” signature on the original backboard.
It turned out the work had been a graduation gift to the owner when she earned her master's degree in the 1960s. Her mother purchased the painting for $3,800 on April 15, 1963, at The Downtown Gallery on 51st Street, O'Keeffe's dealer in Manhattan.
Hidden away and unlocated for decades, the painting only appears in an appendix of O'Keeffe's catalogue raisonné, as its existence was only known through a photograph of the work taken in 1931.
After she received the work as a gift, the woman hung it in her East Village apartment until the mid-1980s, when her family said their fiercely private aunt got nervous that a guest was “eyeing it a bit too closely” during a bridge game. She decided to place it back in its original box and store it safely in the closet, where it sat, in its original packing from the gallery, unknown to the rest of her family until she revealed its existence to her niece earlier this year. The woman passed away shortly afterward. Her niece sent photos of the work to Christie's via email.
After expert evaluation, Christie's will, with great excitement, include the long-lost work in its 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on November 17.
The work's rediscovery is reminiscent of when the Christie's Online Estimate Tool led a Christie's specialist to discover a previously unknown and extremely rare Michelangelo drawing of a figure for the Sistine Chapel, which sold earlier this year at Christie's for $27.2 million.
The Painting
Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I is an important early work by Georgia O'Keeffe, and likely the first iteration in a series of three works depicting Lobo Peak in New Mexico, north of Taos Pueblo. The second iteration is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the third is in a private collection and formerly in the collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller.
Like the very similar panorama in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I was painted the year after Georgia O'Keeffe's initial visit to the region in 1929, during which she became immediately enthralled with the distinct atmosphere, spiritual character, and seemingly endless vistas of the Southwestern landscape. From its expansive skies to its rolling hills, New Mexico quickly became one of the artist's favorite and most iconic subjects, which she frequently explored in her modern abstracted style, emphasizing its curving forms, bright sunlight and wide spectrum of color.
The painting is a distinctly modern vision of O'Keeffe's favorite place, which she continued to reimagine throughout her life. A precursor to her masterful late career landscapes and abstractions, the present work reflects an artist entranced, at her best and most inspired, serially revisiting the peaks around her in reverence and awe. Dominated by undulating lines of earth tones and rich impasto, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I places the viewer in direct communication with the landscape. The painting is an example of O'Keeffe's interest in New Mexico's captivating qualities of light and air that allow one to see vast distances very clearly when compared to the tight, bustling city of New York.
O'Keeffe was fascinated by this passage of hills, painting them in this series, and extolling this same view in a letter to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Transfixed by the scene, she wrote, “This is the Lobo Mountain...I want to paint this mountain—wanted to every year—but it is quite impossible.”
Almost 100 years after O'Keeffe made the impossible possible, the work will be seen by the public for the first time in decades, with an opportunity to give it a new chapter.
