Georgia O 'Keeffe's Pastels

Annie Leibovitz, Georgia O’Keeffe’s pastels, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Research Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 

2010 © Annie Leibovitz. From “Pilgrimage” (Random House, 2011)

I recently read a blog article "An Invitation to Artists Among Us"  that waxed poetic about Georgia O'Keeffe's pastels. The article featured the Annie Leibovitz photograph of O'Keeffe's pastels currently on display at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.  This photograph is part of the exhibit of photography entitled Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage which continues until May 5, 2013. 

The photograph features a box of O'Keeffe pastels as they are displayed in O'Keeffe's studio
when Leibovitz visited O'Keefe's  Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.  Annie Leibovitz was clearly moved by them.  

The blog article I referred to is by Dawn Wink who lives in Santa Fe.  In her article, she expressed the imagery that Leibovitz photo of O'Keeffe's pastels evoked for her.

I could stare and stare at these pastels, made by Georgia O’Keeffe, infused with the natural landscape for their color and shade. I see her walking across the northern New Mexico landscape, dressed in jeans or the dresses she favored. The crunch of dirt and gravel beneath her shoes, the scent of juniper and piñon, the cornflower blue bowl of sky above,  her eyes scan the land, taking in each subtle shade and nuance. What did she use to create all those shades of bone for her skulls?

 The grooves of each pastel evokes images of the piece held between her fingers, as she contemplates the canvas. And, then those iconic hands brush and stroke.

At first reading, I was confused.  Was the author talking of O'Keeffe's pastel paintings or the pastels themselves? Did O'Keeffe do pastels of skulls?   What pastels did she do? And so I began to search my memory . . .

When I think of O'Keeffe's work, I immediately think of her earliest abstractions done in charcoal and the thin water color lines that so moved Stieglitz. I think or her early water color abstractions completed in Texas. Her large oils come to mind --  the architectural abstractions of New York City, her large scale flowers, and, of course, her skulls.  But pastels, other than her relatively recent (in her career) untitled A day with Juan Hamilton, I simply could not envision her pastels.  

Georgia O'Keeffe,  untitled (from  a Day with  Juan Hamilton), 1976, 1977, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum,  Gift of the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation 

Lacking access to Lynes, Catalogue Raisonne, I turned to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum on-line collection, but found only seven O'Keeffe pastel paintings. 

Georgia O’Keeffe, Blue Flower, 1918. Pastel on paper mounted on cardboard, 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico; gift of The Burnett Foundation. © Private collection

I found another at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Georgia O'Keeffe, A Storm, 1922, pastel on paper, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I caught a glimpse of a  photograph of a 1945 pastel by Georgia O'Keeffe shown in the living room of a collector in an article Art Lovers by Deborah Davis in Antiques and Fine Arts Magazine.  How refreshing to see how original O'Keeffe art is used in a home as opposed to the more familiar (and expected) museum.

, Pink Camellia, 1945, by Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). Pastel on paperboard, 19 1/2 x 24-1/2 inches. 

A continued search brought me to an O'Keeffe pastel that was sold in 2002 by Christie's Fine Art Auction entitled Sun Water Maine  also completed in 1922.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Water Maine, 1922, pastel on paper on board, private collection




And I believe that this pastel is now one of my favorite O'Keeffe works.

**Georgia O'Keeffe, Sun Water Maine, Christie's Fine Art Auction, 28 November 2012

    Price realized $2,210,500  

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