$225,150
Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887-1986) Alligator Pear in White Dish , 1921-23 Initialed, titled, and inscribed "OK... O'Keeffe..." on the backing. Oil on canvas-covered board, 12 x 9 in. (30.5 x 22.9 cm), framed. Condition: Very minor surface grime. Provenance: From the artist to The Downtown Gallery, New York; thence to The Mayo Hill Galleries, Wellfleet, Massachusetts, thence to Katrina Grullemans, Chatham, Massachusetts; by family descent to present owners. Literature: Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, Volume Two , New Haven: Yale University, 1999, no. 35, pgs. 1102 and 1115 (illustrated). Exhibitions: The Anderson Galleries, 1924; The Downtown Gallery, New York; The Mayo Hill Galleries, Inc., Wellfleet, Massachusetts, July 1954. N.B. In the forward to a 1936 exhibit at Alfred Stieglitz's American Place gallery, Marsden Hartley described the works of O'Keeffe's earlier period-specifically her diminutive compositions of flowers and vegetables-as contending with "the border-line between finity and infinity" and describing "nature in her simplest appearance." (1) The present work illustrates these qualities recognized by Hartley, which explores the relationship between the organic and inorganic, as well as the sculptural and two-dimensional. The white dish is presented as full-bodied in its meticulously-worked modeling and yet ethereal in its luminosity. The alligator pear, with its thin, reductive surface, is placidly poised both i
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2010-01-29
