O'Keeffe Paintings to be Sold by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum at Sotheby's Auction

Georgia O’Keeffe
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Sotheby’s will offer ‘Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, at its American Art sale in New York on November 20, 2014.

September 28, 2014, source: Sotheby’s

“Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1″ is one of the most well-known examples of O’Keeffe’s celebrated flower paintings, which stand among the most recognizable images in both art history and popular culture. The painting is one of three works by the American artist that are on offer from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which are being sold to benefit its Acquisitions Fund.

“Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1″ will be on view in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, before returning to New York for exhibition in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries beginning 15 November. The work comes to auction with an estimate of $10/15 million, well in excess of the artist’s auction record. 

Also on offer from the Museum’s collection and sold to benefit the Acquisitions Fund is “On the Old Santa Fe Road”, estimated at $2/3 million, and “Untitled (Skunk Cabbage)”, estimated at $500/750,000.

Another version of "Jimson Weed" hangs in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Jimson Weed, 1936, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gift of Eli Lily and Company, c Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

In 1936, cosmetics executive Elizabeth Arden commissioned O’Keeffe to paint Jimson Weed to hang in the exercise room of the new Arden Sport Salon in New York. The result was the largest of O’Keeffe’s flower paintings with four Jimson Weed blossoms. When Eli Lilly and Company purchased the Arden firm in the 1970s, it also acquired the painting. Lilly sold the Arden subsidiary in 1987 and at that time they lent the painting to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  Eli Lilly donated it to the museum in 1997.

The painting of a single "Jimson Weed" which is to be sold, belonged to the artist’s sister, Anita O’Keeffe Young, and for six years had hung in the private dining room in the White House during the George W. Bush administration. It has also been exhibited around the United States, as well as in London and Mexico City. The painting now belongs to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., which has owned it since 1996 and is selling it, along with two other paintings, to benefit its acquisitions fund.  

“Jimson Weed”  has been sold by Sotheby’s  twice before, first in 1987, when it was included in property from the estate of the artist’s sister, and sold for $990,000, and again in 1994, where it sold for $1 million.  According to The New York Times, the paintings were donated to the museum by the Burnett Foundation in Fort Worth, which has been a major benefactor and whose president, Anne W. Marion, is married to John L. Marion, a former chairman of Sotheby’s. (The Marions are founders of the Georgia O’Keefe Museum and on its board.)

The current auction record for a work by Georgia O’Keeffe is $6.2 million, set at Christie’s New York in 2001.

A print of Georgia O'Keeffe's On the Old Santa Fe Road is available for purchase from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Giftshop.

"Jimson Weed", Indianapolis Museum of Art

Santa Fe Art Museum Selling Iconic Georgia O'Keeffe Works

Sothebey's American Art Upcoming Auctions

Print -- On the Old Santa Fe Road