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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE (1887-1986)

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GEORGIA O'KEEFFE - Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico - oil on canvas - 36 x 30 in.

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico194336 x 30 in.(91.44 x 76.2 cm) oil on canvas

Provenance

An American Place, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Max Ascoli, New York, 1944
Descended in family
Harold Diamond, New York, c. 1975
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Elaine Horwich Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1978
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. E. Parry Thomas, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1978
Private Collection, United States

Exhibition

New York, New York, An American Place, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paintings – 1943, January 11 – March 11, 1944, no. 8

Literature

Lynes, Barbara Buhler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Catalogue Raisonné Volum...More...e Two (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), cat. no. 1066, p. 670.
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“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” -Georgia O’Keeffe

History

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico (1943) by celebrated American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is exemplary of the airier, more naturalistic style that the desert inspired in her. O’Keeffe had great affinity for the distinctive beauty of the Southwest, and made her home there among the spindly trees, dramatic vistas, and bleached animal skulls that she so frequently painted. O’Keeffe took up residence at Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch twelve miles outside of the village of Abiquiú in northern New Mexico and painted this cottonwood tree around there. The softer style befitting this subject is a departure from her bold architectural landscapes and jewel-toned flowers.

The cottonwood tree is abstracted into soft patches of verdant greens through which more delineated branches are seen, spiraling in space against pockets of blue sky. The modeling of the trunk and delicate energy in the leaves carry forward past experimentations with the regional trees of the Northeast that had captivated O’Keeffe years earlier: maples, chestnuts, cedars, and poplars, among others. Two dramatic canvases from 1924, Autumn Trees, The Maple and The Chestnut Grey, are early instances of lyrical and resolute centrality, respectively. As seen in these early tree paintings, O’Keeffe exaggerated the sensibility of her subject with color and form.

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Georgia O’Keeffe painting a similar subject at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
Photograph by Ansel Adams
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1953, at her desk in her Abiquiu studio with one of her smaller cottonwood paintings
Photograph by Laura Gilpin
"Dead Cottonwood Tree" (1943)
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
"Autumn Trees, The Maple" (1924)
"The Chestnut Grey" (1924)

“A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.” -Georgia O’Keeffe

MARKET INSIGHTS

The graph by Art Market Research shows that since 1976, paintings by O’Keeffe have increased at an 11.6% annual rate of return.
Since the Record setting sale in 2014 (Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, sold for over $44.4 million), the Georgia O’Keeffe market has seen an ever-increasing demand for signature-style oil paintings.
Even when O’Keeffe’s market took a slight downturn during the pandemic in 2020 (as seen in the AMR graph), ArtPrice’s global index of auction turnover shows that O’Keeffe increased from 263rd to the 63rd highest sold artist that year, illustrating that O’Keeffe’s paintings remain in increasing demand, especially when compared to other artists’ performance during this same time.

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Comparable Paintings Sold at Auction

“Red Hills with Pedernal, White Clouds” (1936) sold for $12,298,000.

Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 in. Sold at Christie’s New York: 9 November 2022.

A wider view of the desert landscape, this painting was sold in the auction of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection
Nature was often the subject of O’Keeffe’s art, and some cottonwood trees can be seen in the distance of this landscape

“Lake George With White Birch” (1921) sold for $11,292,000.

Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 21 in. Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 14 May 2018.

This early canvas with similar subject matter, though smaller-scale, sold for over $11.2 million in 2018, the third-highest auction price for O’Keeffe
Nature subjects, particularly trees, were a frequent focus of O’Keeffe

“Near Abiquiu, New Mexico” (1931) sold for $8,412,500.

Oil on canvas, 16 x 36 in. Sold at Christie’s New York: 09 May 2018.

A smaller work than Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico
An earlier landscape from the same area in New Mexico, this piece sold for over $8.4 million in 2018

“The Red Maple at Lake George” (1926) sold for $8,187,500.

Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in. Sold at Christie’s New York: 20 November 2018.

This O’Keeffe nature subject of the same size sold in 2018 for over $8.18 million
Earlier example from 1926

“Nature Forms – Gaspé” (1931) sold for $6,870,200.

Oil on canvas, 10.1 x 24 in. Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 5 March 2020.

Small-scale, abstract nature subject
Sold recently for over $6.87 million

SCARCITY

43% of O’Keeffe’s paintings are already held in museum collections.
Of the 716 oil on canvas works O’Keeffe painted, less than 300 remain available for private collections.
As time goes on, many of the O’Keeffe paintings currently in private collections will be bequeathed to museums, leaving very few to ever become available.
O’Keeffe first painted the cottonwood trees in Abiquiu for two only years, from 1943 to 1945, and only created a small handful of paintings for this core series. Many works from this Cottonwood Tree series are now in museums like the Butler Institute of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

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Paintings of Cottonwoods, Trees, and Abiquiu in Museum Collections

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

“Cottonwood Tree in Spring” (1943) oil on canvas, 30 1/16 x 36 1/8 in.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art

“Dead Cottonwood Tree” (1943), oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

“Untitled (Cottonwood Tree)” (1945) oil on board, 24 1/4 x 20 in.

The Butler Institute of American Art, Ohio

“Cottonwood III” (1944), oil on canvas, 20 x 30 in.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

“Cottonwood and Pedernal” (1948) oil on canvas, 10 x 12 in.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

“Dead Tree with Pink Hill” (1945), oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Dallas Museum of Art

“Bare Tree Trunks with Snow” (1946), oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 39 1/2 in.

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

“Spring Tree No. 1” (1945), oil on canvas

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Abiquiu Trees VII” (1953), oil on canvas, 10 1/8 x 12 1/8 in.

Brooklyn Museum, New York

“Dark Tree Trunks” (1946), oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

“Near Abiquiu, New Mexico” (1930), oil on canvas, 10 in. × 24 1/8 in.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

“The Mountain, New Mexico” (1931), oil on canvas, 30 1/16 × 36 1/8 in.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

“Untitled (New Mexico Landscape)” (c. 1943) oil on canvas, 13 x 33 1/8 in.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

“Cliffs Beyond Abiquiu, Dry Waterfall” (1943), oil on canvas, 30 x 16 in.

Art Institute of Chicago

“Abiquiu Sand Hills and Mesa” (1945), oil on canvas, 16 x 36 in.

“Filling a space in a beautiful way – that is what art means to me.” -Georgia O’Keeffe

Image Gallery

Additional Resources

Take a video tour of O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiu, New Mexico, presented by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe

Watch “Houses of My Own” by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum to learn more about the inspirational Abiquiu landscape and its cottonwood trees

Explore more of O’Keeffe’s cottonwood series in the collection of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

HJFA Senior Curator, Chip Tom, discusses O’Keeffe’s cottonwood series

Authentication

Cottonwood Tree (Near Abiquiu), New Mexico, 1943 is listed as number 1066 in Barbara Buhler Lynes’s catalogue raisonné of Georgia O’Keeffe’s artwork. The painting is illustrated on page 670 of volume two.