Pink Roses and Larkspur

Pink Roses and Larkspur is a beautiful example of Georgia O'Keeffe's intimate depictions of flowers and her mastery of the pastel medium. It is a thoroughly modern reinterpretation of the traditional still life subject in which O'Keeffe isolates the flowers, floating them against an ambiguous white and green background to create a visually striking pastel. This, as well as the close cropping of the composition, forces the viewer to contemplate the blossoms' bold colors and the varied forms of leaves and petals, as well as the inherent design of the group of flowers. Each of these aspects is further enhanced by the rich, velvety surface of the pastel medium. "Pastel afforded O'Keeffe a medium for her most unabashedly beautiful works of art. Exploiting pastel's broad range in hue and value, she was able to combine the graceful tonal imagery she had developed in charcoal with the intense abstract color she had explored in watercolor. Unexpectedly, she also found that pastel could project a captivating surface and texture. In contrast to her brief campaigns of focused work in charcoal and watercolor, O'Keeffe, beginning in 1915, used pastel steadily throughout her career." (J.C. Walsh, "The Language of O'Keeffe's Materials: Charcoal, Watercolor, Pastel" in R.E. Fine, B.B. Lynes et al., O'Keeffe on Paper, Washington, D.C., 2000, p. 68)
Whereas many Modernists such as Charles Sheeler and John Marin turned to the industrial sector for guidance and inspiration in subject matter, in works such as Pink Roses and Larkspur, O'Keeffe embraced the natural world. As demonstrated by the present work, "O'Keeffe's work, a counter-response to technology, was soft, voluptuous and intimate. Full of rapturous colors and yielding surfaces, it furnishes a sense of astonishing discovery...Though the work is explicitly feminine, it is convincingly and triumphantly powerful, a combination that had not before existed."(R. Robinson, Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, New Haven, Connecticut, 1999, p. 278)