Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

Wave

Details

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
Wave
pastel on paper
19 x 25 in. (48.3 x 63.5 cm.)
Executed in 1922.

Provenance

An American Place, New York.
Claire Forsheim Zeisler, Chicago, Illinois, 1934.
B.C. Holland Inc., Chicago, Illinois.
Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, 1961.
The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1961.
Private collection, Providence, Rhode Island, 1968.
The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1968.
The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, New York.
Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 20th Century American Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors and Sculpture: The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection (The Downtown Gallery), 14 March 1973, lot 55, sold by the above.
ACA Galleries, Inc., New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1972.

Literature

B.B. Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven, Connecticut, 1999, vol. I, p. 207, no. 384, illustrated; vol. II, p. 1112, fig. 13, illustrated.
S. Greenough, ed., My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, New Haven, Connecticut, 2011, p. 324n34.
W.C. Agee, et al., The Scharf Collection: A History Revealed, New York, 2018, pp. 138-39, 180, pl. 78, illustrated.

Exhibited

New York, Anderson Galleries, Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred Pictures: Oils, Water-colors, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe, American, January 29-February 10, 1923.
New York, The Downtown Gallery, New Acquisitions, September 1961.
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art; Utica, New York, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, September 28-November 11, 1962.
New York, The Downtown Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings in Acquamedia and Pastel, January 1964.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, American Painting III, April 1-28, 1964.
New Britain, Connecticut, New Britain Museum of American Art, November 1966.
New York, The Downtown Gallery, Group Show, March-April 1967.
Storrs, Connecticut, University of Connecticut, Museum of Art, Edith Halpert and The Downtown Gallery, 1968, no. 17, illustrated.
Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University, Princeton Art Museum, Princeton Alumni Collections: Works on Paper, April 26-June 21, 1981, p. 198, illustrated.
Andover, Massachusetts, Phillips Academy, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover Alumni Collectors, April 29-July 31, 1995.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction, September 17, 2009-January 17, 2010, pp. 79, 299, pl. 68, illustrated.

Brought to you by

William Haydock

whaydock@christies.com 212-636-2140

Lot Essay

The present work is one of a series of seven pastels George O’Keeffe executed while staying at her friend Florence Schauffler’s home in York Beach, Maine, in May 1922. Seeking to recapture the same vast and untamed landscape from her earliest days in Texas, O’Keeffe was mesmerized by the Maine coast, writing to Alfred Stieglitz, “For three hours watching the tide coming in with these tremendous waves rolling over rocks that make New York seem like an idiot’s toy — The sky mostly blue — and such masses of froth and foam rushing and rolling and booming till everything seemed to shake — and such whiteness I had never imagined — such maddening power —.”(as quoted in S. Greenough, ed. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, New Haven, Connecticut, 2011, pp. 326-27). In Wave, O’Keeffe exhibits her control over the pastel medium while brilliantly capturing the dynamism and sublime beauty of the ocean which so fascinated her.

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