Artist’s Chronology
This chronology was first published in Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999) and is presented here with minor edits. Lynes sourced this information from examination of primary source materials and verification of information in the Stieglitz–O'Keeffe correspondence, as well as referencing several earlier published chronologies including those found in Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters (1986), along with "Notes to the Reader," by Sarah Greenough; Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern (1993), chronology by Charles C. Eldredge; and O'Keeffe in Texas (1998), chronology by Sharon Udall.
1887
15 November: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe born to Francis Calyxtus
O'Keeffe and Ida Totto O'Keeffe at family dairy farm, near Sun Prairie,
Wisconsin, the first girl and the second of seven children: Francis Calyxtus
(1885–1959), Ida Ten Eyck (1889–1961), Anita Natalie (1891–1985), Alexius
Wyckoff (1892–1930), Catherine Blanche (1895–1987), and Claudia Ruth (1899–1984).
1892–1900
Attends Town Hall School and, along with sisters Ida and Anita, receives
art lessons at home; furthers art instruction with Sarah Mann, local
watercolorist.
1901–2
Attends Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, for first year of high school
(as boarder); receives art instruction from Sister Angelique.
1902
Fall: O'Keeffe family moves to Williamsburg, Virginia.
1902–3
As sophomore, attends Madison High School; lives with her aunt, Leonore
("Lola") Totto.
June 1903: joins family in Williamsburg.
1903–5
Fall 1903: begins attending Chatham (Virginia) Episcopal Institute,
as boarder.
June 1905: graduates. Elizabeth May Willis, Chatham's principal and art instructor, recognizes and encourages O'Keeffe's interest in art.
In senior year O'Keeffe serves as art editor of the school yearbook Mortar Board, to which she contributes cat. nos. 19A–M.
1905–6
Fall 1905: attends School of The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and
studies with John Vanderpoel; lives with uncle and aunt, Charles and Alletta
Totto. As AIC registrar's teaching recommendation of 18 April 1907, written at
O'Keeffe's request, indicates, she "took course in drawing and painting,
which includes drawing in black and white from the cast and from life, both
head and figure in outline and in full light and shade, work in still–life in
black and white and in watercolor .... She is well up among the first of her
classes and received Honorable Mention for her work in all of these branches.
She also took the course in Lettering and was in attendance upon lecture on the
History of Painting and Sculpture."
Summer 1906: with family in Williamsburg, recovering from lingering illness; remains there through the next summer.
1907–8
Fall–spring: attends Art Students League, New York; studies
with William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora, and Kenyon Cox; rooms with Florence
Cooney.
January 1908: attends exhibition of works on paper by Auguste Rodin at The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession (291), operated by Alfred Stieglitz; sits for portrait by fellow student Eugene Speicher.
April 1908: possibly sees exhibition of works by Henri Matisse at 291.
June 1908: awarded League's 1907–8 Still Life Scholarship for cat. no. 39.
Summer 1908: as scholarship winner, attends League's Outdoor School at Lake George, New York.
1908–11
Fall 1908: moves to Chicago to work as freelance commercial artist,
again living with uncle and aunt, the Tottos.
Around 1910: becomes ill with measles and moves to Charlottesville, Virginia, to live with mother, sisters, and brothers, who move there from Williamsburg sometime in 1909.
May 1911: applies for, but does not receive, teaching position in Williamsburg public schools.
Fall 1911: temporarily takes over Miss Willis's teaching schedule at Chatham Episcopal Institute, who indicates in 1912 letter, "Miss O'Keeffe had charge of my Art Department last fall."
1912
Summer: attends drawing class at University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, taught by Alon Bement, of Teachers College, Columbia University,
who introduces her to ideas of his mentor, artist-teacher Arthur Wesley Dow,
head of Art Department at Teachers College. Dow's ideas greatly influence
O'Keeffe's subsequent development.
August: moves to Amarillo, Texas, as supervisor of drawing and penmanship in public schools; holds position through spring 1914.
1913
Summer: returns to Charlottesville to work as Bement's assistant at
University of Virginia (and continues to teach there summers through 1916).
1914–15
Summer 1914: Bement encourages her to read Wassily Kandinsky's The
Art of Spiritual Harmony (published in English translation in 1914) and
Arthur Jerome Eddy's Cubists and Post-Impressionism (1914).
Meets Arthur Macmahon, a political science professor from Columbia University who is teaching summer school at University of Virginia and with whom she becomes close friends.
Fall 1914: enrolls at Teachers College, Columbia University.
December 1914–March 1915: attends exhibitions of works by Georges Braque, John Marin, and Pablo Picasso at 291.
February 1915: a work in watercolor (now lost) included in exhibition at the National Arts Club, New York.
June 1915: begins correspondence with former Teachers College classmate, Anita Pollitzer.
Fall 1915: moves to Columbia, South Carolina, to teach art at Columbia College; begins receiving Stieglitz-generated periodicals 291 and Camera Work either through Pollitzer or by ordering copies directly.
October 1915: makes decision to chart new direction for her art and produces seminal series of charcoal abstractions, some of which she sends to Pollitzer in New York during the period October–December.
November 1915: work in watercolor (now lost) included in "Twenty-sixth Annual Exhibition," at the New York Watercolor Club, and cat. no. 44 included in exhibition (title unknown) at Philadelphia Water Color Club.
Thanksgiving 1915: Macmahon spends Thanksgiving with O'Keeffe in South Carolina.
1916
January: Pollitzer takes group of O'Keeffe's charcoal drawings to
Stieglitz at 291 on New Year's Day. With a positive reaction from Stieglitz,
O'Keeffe sends Pollitzer additional work and begins a thirty-year
correspondence with Stieglitz, which is particularly intense in 1916–18.
February: learns she has secured teaching position at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon for the fall and asks friend Olive Denman to assume her teaching position at Columbia College.
March: returns to Teachers College to attend the Dow course in methods specified by West Texas State as prerequisite to assuming her position there; lives with Pollitzer relatives at 51 East 60th Street.
April: attends Marsden Hartley and, possibly, Paul Strand exhibitions at 291.
May: mother dies in Charlottesville.
May: Stieglitz opens group show at 291 that includes some of O'Keeffe's charcoal drawings.
June: in New York, O'Keeffe completes three-dimensional work in plasticine (see cat. nos. 66–80), then leaves for Virginia to teach with Bement.
Late July: receives Stieglitz installation photographs (now lost) of May–June group exhibition at 291.
Late August: before leaving Virginia, sends Stieglitz additional examples of her work and goes on camping trip to Mt. Elliott Springs, Virginia. Moves to Texas to begin teaching job.
October: sister Claudia moves to Canyon to live with her.
November–December: O'Keeffe reads Clive Bell's Art (1913) and Willard Huntington Wright's The Creative Will (1916). Stieglitz includes O'Keeffe work in an informal group show at 291.
1917
January: O'Keeffe addresses Faculty Circle at West Texas State on
subject of modern art.
February: sends Stieglitz more work. Submitted by Stieglitz, cat. nos. 52 and 61 accepted for "First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists" (to open April 10).
By March: O'Keeffe befriends West Texas student, Ted Reid, and they remain friends until his death in 1983. (Reid attends her retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 and at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970, and travels to New Mexico to see O'Keeffe at least six times in the 1970s and early 1980s.)
April: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe," first solo show of her work, at 291; soon after opening, cat. no. 128 sells for $400. (Because of financial and other difficulties, Stieglitz closes 291 after O'Keeffe's exhibition.)
Late May: O'Keeffe travels to New York but arrives after show closes; Stieglitz rehangs it for her. Spends time with Stieglitz and Strand, and Stieglitz photographs her for first time.
June: returns to Canyon to teach summer school; later in month, Strand sends her examples of his photography, and they begin corresponding.
August: vacations in and around Ward, Colorado, with sister Claudia. On way back to Texas, stops in Santa Fe for first time and is immediately impressed by New Mexico's vast skies and vistas and the stark beauty of its landscape forms. Sends Stieglitz new work. Between January and September in the West, produces some of the most innovative work of her career (see cat. nos. 173–225), much of which reveals the depth of her passion for the sky-dominated landscape of the Texas Panhandle.
Fall: is increasingly alienated from her colleagues in Canyon (her advice to students not to leave school to join the war effort is interpreted as a sign of lack of patriotism) and is unable to work productively.
Early winter: becomes ill.
1918
Late February: granted leave of absence from teaching
responsibilities and, on 21 February, moves first to San Antonio and later, in March,
to a farm in Waring, Texas, owned by the family of Leah Harris, a food
preservation demonstrator O'Keeffe first met during her Amarillo days.
Relocating rejuvenates O'Keeffe, who produces such works as cat. nos. 228–52.
May: Stieglitz sends Strand to Texas to discover if O'Keeffe would consider moving to New York.
June: O'Keeffe and Strand arrive in New York, and O'Keeffe moves into studio apartment at 114 East 59th Street that Stieglitz's niece, Elizabeth, is not using.
July: Stieglitz leaves Emmeline Obermeyer Stieglitz, his wife since 1893, to live with O'Keeffe. That month, he begins photographing her in earnest, and she resigns from West Texas State, accepting Stieglitz's offer to underwrite a year of painting.
August: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz are invited by his mother, Hedwig, to come to the Stieglitz estate at Lake George and, after a brief return to New York, spend September and October there.
November: O'Keeffe's father dies in Petersburg, Virginia.
1919
March: Stieglitz includes two O'Keeffe works in exhibition (titles
unknown) at Young Women's Hebrew Association.
July–November: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz spend most of summer and fall at Lake George (a pattern that continues until 1929, when O'Keeffe spends the first of many subsequent periods, usually summers and falls, working in New Mexico). Begins painting close–up views of flowers, such as cat. no. 306. (Through the mid–1930s, the environment at Lake George inspires numerous paintings of landscape or plant-form subject matter.)
1920
March: makes first of many trips to York Beach, Maine; stays at inn
owned by Stieglitz's friends, Bennet and Marnie Schauffler. This and subsequent
trips away from Lake George are often in response either to O'Keeffe's feeling
ill or to her need for quiet; she feels her concentration compromised at Lake
George by the almost constant stream of Stieglitz relatives and associates who
visit there. Such trips to the Maine coast result in paintings of seascapes (such
as cat. nos. 324–26, 381–87, 567,644), as well as shells and seaweed (such as
cat. nos. 534–46, 622–24, 707–8).
July–early December: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George; in August, O'Keeffe supervises renovation of outbuilding on property (the "shanty") for use as studio.
December: in New York, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz move into house of Stieglitz's brother, Leopold, at 60 East 65th Street and live there winters through 1924. Residence serves as meeting place for artists, writers, and critics who gather around Stieglitz and was gallery where his and O'Keeffe's work is shown to friends and prospective buyers.
1921
February: Stieglitz retrospective exhibition opens at The Anderson
Galleries (145 prints, 1886–1921); several nudes among the 45 photographs of O'Keeffe
create sensation with public and critics.
April: "Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings Showing the Later Tendencies in Art" opens at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with work selected by Stieglitz, who includes cat. nos. 258 and 284.
June–late October: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George.
1922
March: O'Keeffe designs logotype for MSS., a new periodical
produced by Stieglitz and his colleagues (and later contributes essay to its 4
December issue, see cat. no. 440A).
May: O'Keeffe stays with close friend, dance and music patron Alma Morganthau Wertheim, at Cos Cob, Connecticut; subsequently travels to Boston and York Beach. Sojourns at Cos Cob lead to "Skunk Cabbage" series (see cat. nos. 370–73, 612–13, 627).
June: exhibition opens at Municipal Building, Freehold, New Jersey, to which Stieglitz submits now-unknown work by O'Keeffe; shortly thereafter he joins O'Keeffe at York Beach.
July–November: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George.
1923
January: Stieglitz opens "Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred
Pictures: Oils, Water–colors, Pastels, Drawings, by Georgia O'Keeffe, American,"
an exhibition of over 100 works at The Anderson Galleries. Majority of reviewers
evoke Freudian theory in interpretations of work, especially the abstractions,
thus broadcasting idea first promoted by Stieglitz in 1916 note in Camera Work,
that O'Keeffe's work is a manifestation of her sexuality.
April: Stieglitz again exhibits his photographs at The Anderson Galleries (116 prints dated 1918–23, all but one previously unexhibited, with 25 of O'Keeffe).
June: Stieglitz's daughter, Kitty, suffers postpartum collapse; subsequent mental instability requires her permanent institutionalization.
June–December: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George, with O'Keeffe going to York Beach in September.
1924
March: Stieglitz opens "Alfred Stieglitz Presents Fifty-One
Recent Pictures: Oils, Water-colors, Pastels, Drawings, by Georgia O'Keeffe,
American," at The Anderson Galleries and, simultaneously, opens an
exhibition of 61 of his photographs. Catalogue statement by O'Keeffe indicates
that the show, with a dominance of works of recognizable subject matter, is
intended to "clarify some of the issues written of by the critics"; clearly,
a move to discourage continuing Freudian interpretations of her work.
Spring: Stieglitz experiences attack of kidney stones.
September: Stieglitz’s divorce from wife finalized.
November: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz move to apartment at 35 East 58th Street and, on 11 December, are married in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, with George Engelhard (Stieglitz’s brother-in-law) and artist John Marin as witnesses.
1925
March: Stieglitz opens "Alfred Stieglitz Presents Seven
Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs & Things, Recent & ever Before
Publicly Shown, by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles Demuth,
Paul Strand, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz" at The Anderson
Galleries, in which O'Keeffe's large-format paintings of flowers are first
exhibited. (Though these trigger continued critical declarations of sexual
meaning in her work, she continues to work with enlarged views of flowers as a subject
off and on through 1957.) During run of exhibition, Stieglitz confined to bed
with pain from kidney stones.
June–September: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George.
June: Stieglitz again in bed with continuing kidney problems.
July: O'Keeffe ill from reaction to vaccination.
Mid–November: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz move to the Shelton Hotel, on Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th, living first on 12th floor and later on other floors until 1936, when they move to 405 East 54th Street.
December: Stieglitz opens The Intimate Gallery in The Anderson Galleries building. From this point forward in 1920s O'Keeffe essentially is in charge of installations and much gallery business.
1926
February: Stieglitz opens "Fifty Recent Paintings, by Georgia
O'Keeffe," at The Intimate Gallery, which includes first of many
depictions of New York architecture, a subject she addresses between 1925 and
the late 1930s.
Late February: O'Keeffe travels to Washington, D.C., and, on 26 February, speaks at National Woman's Party dinner. (She joins NWP in her teens and maintains her membership until dissolution of party in 1970s.)
April: travels to Cos Cob.
June: Stieglitz suffers severe kidney attack and is admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital.
August: O'Keeffe goes to York Beach, with Stieglitz joining her there in late September.
October: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George.
December: they take rooms on 28th floor of Shelton Hotel.
1927
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings,
1926," at The Intimate Gallery.
April: O'Keeffe at Lake George.
June: admitted to Mt. Sinai for first of two breast surgeries for benign cyst removal. (Experience provides inspiration for cat. no. 574.)
June: first retrospective, "Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe," opens at the Brooklyn Museum.
November: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George and, in December, O'Keeffe admitted to Mt. Sinai for second surgery. (During this year, paints cat. no. 608, a document of her growing realization of the confinement of Lake George, visual and otherwise, and her longing to return to the freedom she felt in the West.)
1928
January: Stieglitz opens "O'Keeffe Exhibition," at The
Intimate Gallery.
April: Stieglitz announces sale of six O'Keeffe calla lily paintings for $25,000 (among which are cat. nos. 423, 425–26, 429). Anderson Galleries president Mitchell Kennerley, the buyer, subsequently suffers financial difficulties that prevent him from actualizing purchase.
May: O'Keeffe travels to Boston and York Beach.
June–December: O’Keeffe and Stieglitz at Lake George; from July–early August, O'Keeffe travels to Illinois and Wisconsin to visit family.
Mid–August: back at Lake George with Stieglitz.
Mid–September: Stieglitz has first severe angina attack, O'Keeffe involved for weeks with nursing him back to health.
November: Stieglitz and O'Keeffe take rooms on 30th floor of Shelton Hotel.
1929
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings,
1928," at The Intimate Gallery.
April: O'Keeffe and artist Rebecca Strand (wife of Paul Strand) leave by train for Santa Fe, New Mexico. Almost immediately, they move to Taos as guests of arts supporter-writer Mabel Dodge Luhan, who provides O'Keeffe with a studio.
Other Luhan guests include photographer Ansel Adams, artists John Marin and Miguel Covarrubias, and art historian Daniel Catton Rich.
May: Stieglitz learns that The Anderson Galleries will close and he must give up space leased to The Intimate Gallery.
June–September: Stieglitz at Lake George, with occasional trips to New York. In New Mexico, O'Keeffe learns to drive and purchases Ford automobile.
June: camps at Bear Lake, on Taos Pueblo (experience inspires her to produce cat. nos. 683–85, a theme she returns to in 1930 and 1931, with cat. nos. 744–45, 791) and makes ten-day trip to Mesa Verde.
July: goes on four-day trip to attend Las Vegas (New Mexico) Rodeo and, in August, on ten-day trip with Charles Collier, son of Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz and his wife painter-writer Marie Garland, and writer-poet Spud Johnson. They tour Navajo sites in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and the Grand and Bryce National Canyons. Later that month, attends Santo Domingo Indian dance with Miriam Hapgood, daughter of writer Hutchins Hapgood.
August: leaves for Lake George by train via Chicago, where visits brother, Alexius.
Mid–September: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz go to York Beach.
November: they leave Lake George for residence at Shelton Hotel.
December: "Paintings by 19 Living Americans," with five works by O'Keeffe, opens at The Museum of Modern Art. Stieglitz opens final gallery, An American Place, in Room 1710, 509 Madison Avenue, with Marin exhibition. Arrangements to secure space and fund operation of gallery made by Paul Strand and Dorothy Norman. Since November 1927, Norman, a wealthy young woman smitten with Stieglitz, has come to The Intimate Gallery on an almost daily basis and becomes a regular contributor to his efforts.
1930
O'Keeffe's brother Alexius dies.
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: 27 New Paintings, New Mexico, New York, Lake George, Etc.," at An American Place, which includes earliest paintings of New Mexico crosses and of San Francisco de Asis Church in Ranchos de Taos.
Early March: O'Keeffe publicly debates Michael Gold, editor of New Masses, and later that month travels to York Beach.
April: to Lake George.
June: returns to New Mexico by train, stopping to stay with relatives in Chicago and Portage, Wisconsin.
June–September: guest of Luhan in Taos. Camps again at Bear Lake in June and sees Puye Cliff dwellings in August. (Taos landscape configurations serve as inspiration for works such as cat. nos. 740–43, 792.) She also spends time near Alcalde, at the H & M Ranch, owned by Marie Garland, where she begins paintings of the landscape in and around Alcalde, such as cat. nos. 730–39.
September: returns to New York.
1931
Late April: O'Keeffe to New Mexico by train via Chicago. Rents small
house from Garland on H & M Ranch property. Drives to and around Abiquiú,
where, in May, sees for first time Plaza Blanca, the site she calls "The White
Place," which becomes the subject of works such as cat. nos. 996, 1027,
1062–63.
June: about two weeks painting in Taos; stays first with Luhan, then at El Chamiso Lodge.
July: returns to Lake George, after shipping home barrel filled with bones found in the desert.
August: at York Beach.
October–December: back and forth between Lake George and New York.
December: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: 33 New Paintings (New Mexico)" at An American Place, the first exhibition with paintings of bones.
1932
February: Stieglitz opens exhibition of 127 of his photographs at An
American Place. A number of prints of Dorothy Norman suggest seriousness of
their relationship, but he shows no nudes of her.
April: O'Keeffe accepts $1,500 commission to paint mural for powder room in Radio City Music Hall, scheduled to open at end of year.
May–October: back and forth between Lake George and New York and, in both June and August, travels to Canada with Stieglitz's niece, Georgia Engelhard. From these trips come paintings of barns, crosses, and the sea, such as cat. nos. 805–6, 818–19.
October: faced with technical and other difficulties, abandons Radio City Music Hall commission and stops painting entirely. Toward end of year, Norman, who essentially has assumed responsibility for the operation of An American Place, wages successful campaign to renew lease on gallery's space. Stieglitz puts lease in Norman's name.
1933
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings–New&
Some Old" at An American Place. O'Keeffe becomes ill and moves to New York
apartment of sister Anita Young.
February: admitted to Doctor's Hospital, suffering from psychoneurosis but, in March, is able to see her exhibition at An American Place.
March–April: recuperates in Bermuda with her friend, photographer Marjorie Content, and daughter, Susan, at Torwood, west of Cambridge Beaches, a house owned by Garland.
May–December: O'Keeffe at Lake George with occasional trips to New York. In October, is recovered enough to begin drawing; in December, writer and friend Jean Toomer visits her there.
1934
January–February: at Lake George. In January, begins painting after
13-month hiatus (see cat. no. 822), and on 29 January, Stieglitz opens
"Georgia O'Keeffe at 'An American Place,' 44 elected Paintings 1915–1927."
March–April: O'Keeffe again travels to Bermuda, this time with Alma Wertheim and future husband, Paul Wiener. O'Keeffe makes drawings of Banyan trees and banana flowers (see cat. nos. 830–34, 839–46).
Late April–early May: in New York or at Lake George.
June: travels by train to Chicago; drives from Chicago to New Mexico with Content, where until September they rent house on H & M Ranch, and O'Keeffe rents and works in small, separate house on the property.
July: meets Mary Wheelwright, who owns Los Luceros, a ranch in Alcalde, and who in 1937 will found the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.
August: first visit to Ghost Ranch, a dude ranch north of Abiquiú, in which Nature magazine founder Arthur Pack buys controlling interest. He peoples it with Eastern friends, including Charles and Anne Lindbergh; lawyer and photography collector David McAlpin, grandnephew of J. D. Rockefeller; and the Johnson & Johnson heirs, Robert and Seward, and their families. Stunning landscape configurations around Ghost Ranch provide new inspiration for O'Keeffe's work. Through September, frequently drives from Alcalde to Ghost Ranch area to paint. In September, attends wedding of Content and Jean Toomer in Taos and goes to White Place with Arthur Pack's wife, Eleanor Brown.
October: returns to Lake George by car accompanied by Spud Johnson.
December: publication of America & Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait, a tribute in honor of Stieglitz's seventieth birthday, spearheaded by Norman. Stieglitz does not contribute essay to book; O'Keeffe is asked to contribute but does not.
1935
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of
Paintings (1919–1934)" at An American Place.
March: O'Keeffe to Lake George.
May: vacations in Ogunquit, Maine, with former Teachers College classmate, Dorothy True.
June: returns to Lake George.
July: drives to New Mexico with artist Lauren Mosley, stopping at home of artists Arthur Dove and Helen Torr en route. Until 2 August at Garland's ranch, then moves to room at Ghost Ranch.
August: goes with friends to Snake Dance, Canyon de Chelly; in September, travels through Navajo country, Chaco Canyon, Truchas, Trampas, and Taos; and in October, travels to Copper Canyon with Robert and Maggie Johnson and Seward Johnson's wife Esther (who remains her life-long friend).
November: leaves New Mexico for New York, driving through Canyon, Texas, where she retrieves the artwork she left in the classroom in which she taught in 1916–18 (as reported by T. B. Reeves, in an article of 12 November 1935, in the Amarillo [Texas] Daily News.– "One day Isabel Robinson, who was head of the art program, looked up and saw Georgia O'Keeffe standing in the doorway. She walked back to the files and picked out every drawing she ever did and walked out with them. She never said a word.").
1936
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of
Recent Paintings, 1935," at An American Place.
April: O'Keeffe and Stieglitz move from Shelton Hotel to penthouse apartment at 405 East 54th Street.
May: O'Keeffe at Lake George.
June: leaves by car for New Mexico; first summer living in the house at Ghost Ranch she buys in 1940, Rancho de los Burros. From the patio of this house, she has unobstructed view of Cerro Pedernal, the flat–topped mountain she depicts frequently in paintings dating from 1936 through 1958; and the cliffs, hills, and trees that surround the house provide her subject matter for the next thirty-five years.
July: two-week trip to Navajo country, Monument Valley, and Rainbow Bridge.
August: paints twice at site in northwest New Mexico she calls the "Black Place," which she paints many times through the mid–1940s (cat. nos. 895–97, 1024, 1039–40, 1058, 1080–83, 1112–13, 1173–75).
September: returns to New York by car with Mosley.
Fall: receives $10,000 commission from Elizabeth Arden to make large painting for new exercise salon in New York (see cat. no. 886).
1937
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: New
Paintings," An American Place, New York, N.Y.
March: O'Keeffe visits sister Anita Young in Palm Beach.
June: at Lake George.
July: leaves for New Mexico by car, again stopping to see Dove and Helen Torr en route.
September: travels to Arizona and Utah with Spud Johnson; late September–early October: travels with Ansel Adams and McAlpin to sites in Colorado and Arizona, including Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly.
October: returns to New York.
December: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: The 14th Annual Exhibition of Paintings With Some Recent O'Keeffe Letters" at An American Place. Late in year, after more than 60 years as photographer, Stieglitz's health forces him to stop making photographs.
1938
Spring: O'Keeffe receives commission from Steuben for design for
glass plate.
May: O'Keeffe travels to Williamsburg, Virginia, to receive honorary degree from College of William and Mary.
Mid–July: Stieglitz travels to Lake George to continue recuperation from April heart attack and pneumonia; O'Keeffe with him.
Summer: O'Keeffe receives commission from advertising agency N. W. Ayer to travel to Hawaii to produce paintings for a Dole Company promotional campaign.
August: after Stieglitz's recovery, O'Keeffe to New Mexico by train via Chicago; and in August–September travels to Yosemite, then to San Francisco, Monterey, and Los Angeles with Adams, McAlpin, and McAlpin's cousin, Godfrey Rockefeller and his wife Helen.
October: returns to Ghost Ranch and, in late October, to New York.
1939
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils
And Pastels" at An American Place; O'Keeffe contributes statement to
exhibition catalogue that rejects Freudian interpretations of her flower
paintings.
Late January–April: travels at Dole's expense to Hawaii through Los Angeles, where she visits friends and, on the Islands, paints landscapes and flowers.
April: after return to New York completes cat. no. 965 at Dole's demand (Dole sends pineapple plant from Hawaii to O'Keeffe's apartment).
Summer: ill at Lake George. Honored as one of 12 outstanding women of past 50 years by New York World's Fair Committee.
Fall: trip to York Beach.
1940
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils
and Pastels" at An American Place.
February: O'Keeffe travels to San Francisco to see work in Golden Gate International Exposition.
February–March: travels to Nassau at invitation of Johnsons (Seward, Robert, and their wives).
June: travels to New Mexico by car with her friend, meat-packing heiress Narcissa Swift, stopping in Chicago and in Wisconsin at Madison and Portage to visit family.
October: buys Ghost Ranch house. During the month at Ghost Ranch is introduced to sculptor Mary Callery, with whom she becomes close friends; meets Mary Wheelwright's assistant at Los Luceros, Maria Chabot, who travels with her to Black Place. Also paints at White Place. Visitors include painter and Stieglitz gallery associate, William Einstein.
November: O'Keeffe attends Fire Dance in Navajo Country; learns that Stieglitz has suffered minor heart attack.
December: discovers a ruined casa grande in Abiquiú that she will purchase in 1945; returns to New York.
1941
January: Stieglitz opens "Exhibition of Georgia O'Keeffe"
at An American Place.
April: O'Keeffe travels with McAlpin to Richmond and Charlottesville, Virginia.
May: travels to Chicago by car, again with Swift, and on to New Mexico by airplane.
June: Chabot returns to New Mexico from her home in Texas and moves into O'Keeffe's house at Ghost Ranch. Through 1945, she manages the house, works on her own writings, and accompanies O'Keeffe on painting excursions.
August: they travel to White Place, where O'Keeffe paints.
September and November: O'Keeffe and Chabot at Black Place.
November: O'Keeffe returns to New York.
1942
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Recent
Paintings, 1941" at An American Place.
May: O'Keeffe travels by train to Madison to receive honorary degree from University of Wisconsin and sees family; also goes to see Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin.
June: travels by train from Chicago to New Mexico.
August: O'Keeffe and Chabot to Santo Domingo Corn Dance and, in September and November, to White Place on painting excursion.
December: O'Keeffe returns to New York by train and moves with Stieglitz to 59 East 54th Street, her last New York address.
1943
January: O'Keeffe travels to Chicago to install and attend events
related to opening of retrospective, "Georgia O'Keeffe," at the Art
Institute of Chicago, organized by Daniel Catton Rich, who writes essay for
catalogue. Chabot comes to Chicago to see exhibition.
March: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings–1942–1943," at An American Place.
April: O'Keeffe travels by train to New Mexico. In summer, begins paintings of cottonwood trees, which she continues to address as subject through 1954.
August and October: Chabot and O'Keeffe at Black Place; and in October O'Keeffe returns to New York.
1944
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings–1943"
at An American Place. Begins to help organize "History of an American:
Alfred Stieglitz '291' and after: Selections From the Stieglitz
Collection," to open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September.
March: Chabot visits O'Keeffe and Stieglitz in New York.
April: O'Keeffe travels to New Mexico, and later in the month, Rosalind Irvine, Secretary of the American Art Research Council at the Whitney Museum of American Art, approaches Stieglitz about beginning a catalogue of O'Keeffe's work. Stieglitz and O'Keeffe agree, and Irvine starts work with O'Keeffe after the latter's return from New Mexico.
May and June: O'Keeffe and Chabot again travel to Black Place.
August: O'Keeffe organizes support for health clinic in Abiquiú.
September: returns to New York.
1945
January: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings,
1944" at An American Place.
May: O'Keeffe travels by train to New Mexico via Chicago. Wheelwright deeds Los Luceros to Chabot, who continues to travel with O'Keeffe and stay with her for brief intervals.
June: Abiquiú clinic opens, underwritten by O'Keeffe.
August: Pollitzer and husband, Elie Edson, at O'Keeffe's.
September: Callery with O'Keeffe and begins bust of O’Keeffe.
November: O'Keeffe returns to New York.
December: purchases Abiquiú property from Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
1946
February: Stieglitz opens "Georgia O'Keeffe" at An
American Place. O'Keeffe and Museum of Modern Art curator James Johnson Sweeney
begin organizing retrospective, "Georgia O'Keeffe," to open at the museum
in May. O'Keeffe travels to Washington, D.C., with Pollitzer and Rose
Covarrubias. Engages Chabot to restore Abiquiú house; Chabot begins
restoration. O'Keeffe produces second three–dimensional work, see cat. nos.
1123–45.
June: O'Keeffe flies to New Mexico; begins work on first in series of paintings based on Abiquiú house patio door (subsequent works in series continue through 1960).
10 July: Stieglitz has stroke; is found unconscious in 54th Street apartment. O'Keeffe is notified by telegram, and Chabot drives her directly to Albuquerque for a flight to New York.
13 July: Stieglitz dies.
14 July: Chabot arrives in New York by train, bringing O'Keeffe what she had no time to pack when she left New Mexico.
Late September: O'Keeffe returns to New Mexico.
Fall: employs 26-year-old Doris Bry, part-time, to help organize the Stieglitz papers; begins correspondence with Edith Halpert, owner of The Downtown Gallery, who, since the mid–1930s, had worked with Stieglitz to find buyers for O'Keeffe's work. Halpert will become O'Keeffe's exclusive agent in 1950. In October, O'Keeffe provides Halpert with a list of her work.
December: returns to New York; spends Christmas with Esther Johnson in New Jersey. Paints only occasionally during this year.
1947
January–early summer: O'Keeffe in New York (where she
primarily lives until 1949), working with Bry to settle the Stieglitz Estate,
which results in ultimate distribution of his art collection to seven
institutions—Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fisk
University; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art,
Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—and
placement of his papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University. O'Keeffe works with Sweeney to organize two exhibitions that occur
at the same time at The Museum of Modern Art in 1947, one of Stieglitz's collections
and another of his photographs.
August: Bry works with O'Keeffe in New Mexico. Chabot continues to rebuild Abiquiú house (finishing in 1949).
November: O'Keeffe employs Edith Halpert to appraise artwork in Stieglitz estate.
1948
By February: O'Keeffe in New York.
April: travels by train to New Mexico via Chicago, where she stops to see Rich.
July: Bry working with O'Keeffe at Abiquiú house; Rodakiewitz completes Land of Enchantment, a film about New Mexico that includes footage of O'Keeffe.
November: O'Keeffe returns to New York.
1949
June: leaves New York to live permanently in New Mexico, where she
habitually spends winter and spring in Abiquiú and summer and fall at Ghost
Ranch.
August: elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters. Visitors include Rich and wife (August), writer Frances O'Brien, and photographer Eliot Porter (September). Bry also in New Mexico in September.
October: O'Keeffe travels to Nogales and to Taliesin West in Scottsdale; Chabot completes roof of Abiquiú house.
October: O'Keeffe travels with Bry by car to Fisk University to oversee installation of Stieglitz Collection at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery. Bry sends most of Stieglitz papers to Donald Gallup, Curator of Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Library.
December: O'Keeffe in Abiquiú; Callery stays with her for Christmas.
1950
January and August: Bry in New Mexico and, using the records of
O'Keeffe's work established by O'Keeffe and Rosalind Irvine between 1946 and
1950, begins compiling Abiquiú Notebooks, O'Keeffe's personal inventory of her
work.
February: O'Keeffe puts Bry in charge of photographing artwork stored in New York.
July: takes lease on An American Place for a year; Pollitzer begins working on biography of O'Keeffe that O'Keeffe will underwrite beginning in 1953; critic Murdock Pemberton at O'Keeffe's. O'Keeffe begins organizing "Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings 1946–1950," to open at An American Place in October.
August: Visitors include writers Christopher Isherwood and Carl Van Vechten (August), and close friend Peggy Kiskadden and family (September).
October: travels to New York to install An American Place exhibition. Late October: returns to New Mexico via Kansas City, where she sees Oriental collection at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
December: O'Keeffe instructs Bry to send all but 50–60 of her works stored in New York to New Mexico; Callery visits at Christmas.
1951
February–March: O'Keeffe travels to Mexico for six weeks with Spud
Johnson, Elliott and Aline Porter. Trip includes drive to Yucatan with Rose and
Miguel Covarrubias; she visits Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
April–August, October: Bry in New Mexico.
August: Constance Friess, O'Keeffe's New York physician, visits; O'Keeffe becomes interested in publishing letters exchanged between her and Stieglitz and discusses possibility with Rich.
September: proposes "O'Keeffe Paintings in Pastel: 1914–1952" to Halpert (to open in February 1952 at the Downtown Gallery); climbs Pedernal for the first time.
November: drives with Frances O'Brien to see long-term friend Ettie Stettheimer in Tucson, Arizona, and revisits Taliesin West; begins teaching 16-year-old Jackie Suazo of Abiquiú how to paint.
1952
January: acquires two six-month-old chow puppies, first of
succession of chows; visit by William Einstein, upon whom O'Keeffe relies to
help make decisions about future direction of her career.
June: receives honorary degree from Mount Holyoke College, and later in the month, goes to Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.
September: Rose Covarrubias visits; Bry with O'Keeffe for eight weeks.
October: Alan Priest, Curator of Far Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, comes to see O'Keeffe.
November: O'Keeffe receives Honorary Degree from Mills College; Einstein with O'Keeffe; O'Keeffe burns 40 paintings.
1953
January: essay O'Keeffe writes for Einstein exhibition at Associated
American Artists published. With Bry ill, Einstein works with Halpert in New
York to carry out O'Keeffe's instructions to place works in storage.
February: Downtown Gallery-organized retrospective, "An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe," opens at Dallas Museum of Art.
March: O'Keeffe sends last of Stieglitz materials to Beinecke.
May: O'Keeffe makes ten-week trip to Spain and France; she and Callery take driving trip around France.
June: travels to New York.
July: returns to Ghost Ranch. Visitors include sister Claudia, Content (August), and Friess (September). O'Keeffe purchases Ford convertible.
November: travels to New York.
December: in Abiquiú; Callery visits for Christmas.
1954
March–May: makes three–month trip to Spain accompanied by secretary,
Betty Pilkington.
December: travels to New York.
1955
March: travels to New York to help organize and install
"Georgia O'Keeffe: New Paintings" at The Downtown Gallery; on way,
stops in Chicago to attend exhibition of Japanese Art at the Art Institute of
Chicago.
1956
Mid-March–mid-June: trip with Pilkington to Peru, from which she
draws inspiration for cat. nos. 1285–90, 1295–1310, 1317–21.
Summer: Pollitzer sends O'Keeffe draft of biography, of which O'Keeffe disapproves. She refuses to continue support and urges Pollitzer to abandon project. (Pollitzer biography finally published in 1988, two years after O'Keeffe's death and 13 years after Pollitzer's.)
1957
March: O'Keeffe and Pilkington spend three weeks in Mexico.
September: Bry with O'Keeffe.
November: O'Keeffe to Chicago to see Picasso show.
December: travels with Pilkington to Oaxaca.
1958
February: ten-day trip to sister's house in Palm Beach, then travels
to New York to install "Georgia O'Keeffe: Watercolors, 1916–17" at
The Downtown Gallery.
April: returns to Abiquiú.
1959
Brother Francis dies.
January–April: travels via San Francisco and Honolulu to Southeast Asia, the Far East, India, the Middle East, and Italy. Trip motivates numerous sketches and paintings of rivers, clouds, and landscape configurations as seen from the air. Mid-year visitors to New Mexico include Kiskadden (June) and photographer Todd Webb (July).
September: Bry working in New Mexico.
1960
January: travels to New York.
July: Rich stays with O'Keeffe in New Mexico; O'Keeffe and Bry help Rich organize retrospective, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Forty Years of Her Art," which opens in October at the Worcester (Massachusetts) Art Museum, with Rich as curator and catalogue author.
Late October–November: O'Keeffe makes second trip to Asia.
1961
Sister Ida dies.
Spring: helps organize and install what will be her last exhibition at The Downtown Gallery, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Recent Paintings and Drawings," which opens in early April.
Late July–early August: makes seven-day, 180-mile Colorado River trip by raft with, among others, photographers Porter and Webb; "Canyon Country" paintings (see cat. nos. 1499–1504) produced in response to this and subsequent river trips.
September: Bry in New Mexico.
1962
March: travels to Egypt with Rich and wife, but wife becomes ill
forcing return.
April: sister Claudia in Abiquiú.
Summer: sister Catherine Klenert arrives.
August: begins making large-scale works (approximately 60 by 80 inches).:
October: travels to Grand Canyon and Zion National Park.
December: elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters; travels to New York.
1963
March–April: travels to Greece, Egypt, and the Near East.
April: awarded Brandeis University Creative Arts Award.
Summer: Catherine Klenert again stays with O'Keeffe.
August: severs relationship with Halpert and, soon thereafter, appoints Bry as agent.
September: travels to Colorado.
1964
January: travels to New York, stopping in Houston and Fort Worth on
return.
February: receives honorary degree from The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
1965
May: trip to Lake Powell and Colorado River.
Summer: in garage at Ghost Ranch paints cat. no. 1498, her largest picture.
1966
March: attends opening of retrospective, "Georgia O'Keeffe: An
Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966," at the Amon
Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth (Mitchell A. Wilder is curator and
catalogue author).
September: travels to Austria and England. Receives Wisconsin Governor's Award for Creativity in the Arts.
1967
June: receives honorary degree from School of the Art Institute of
Chicago.
1968
April: supports construction of gymnasium in Abiquiú.
May: travels to New York.
August: Rich and family are with O'Keeffe. During year, O'Keeffe's eyesight begins to fail.
1969
January: travels to Mexico.
March–April: travels to Vienna with friend Richard Pritzlaff to see Spanish Riding School.
April: in New York.
May: receives Distinguished Service Citation in the Arts from the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.
September–October: another trip to Lake Powell, Glen Canyon, and Colorado River.
May: named Benjamin Franklin Fellow by Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, London.
December–January 1970: travels to Mexico.
1970
May: awarded National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for
Painting.
Summer: again travels to Colorado River.
Early October: installs retrospective, "Georgia O'Keeffe," at the Whitney Museum of American Art, curated by Whitney Research Curator, Lloyd Goodrich, and Bry.
November: travels to Texas with architect–designer Alexander Girard and wife Susan.
1971
Early in year: loses central vision; retains only peripheral sight.
May: writer Blanche Matthias visits.
June: receives honorary degrees from Brown and Columbia Universities.
October: receives M. Carey Thomas Prize, Bryn Mawr College.
1972
May: receives honorary degree from Minneapolis College of Art and
Design.
August: receives Edward MacDowell Medal from the MacDowell Colony.
October: is awarded Certificate for an Honorary Membership to the American Watercolor Society. During year, completes last unassisted oil painting, cat. no. 1581, though continues to work in oil with assistance until 1977. (Works unassisted in watercolor and charcoal until 1978 and in graphite until 1984.)
1973
May: travels to New York; receives medal from The Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture.
June: receives honorary degree from Harvard University.
September: Rich again in New Mexico.
November: meets potter-sculptor Juan Hamilton, who becomes her assistant and, later, her close friend and representative. (Among other things, Hamilton is a travelling companion and facilitator, making possible completion of several projects, including Viking Press publication Georgia O'Keeffe [1976] and Perry Miller Adato video Georgia O'Keeffe [1977]). Also in November, travels to New York.
1974
Anita Pollitzer dies.
January: trip to Morocco.
Spring and summer: completes text for Some Memories of Drawings, published by Atlantis Editions, with introduction by Bry.
October: suffers from fall, dislocating shoulder. Hamilton begins teaching O'Keeffe to work with clay, which she explores as medium through mid–1980s. Receives New Mexico's First Annual Governor's Award.
1976
January, March: travels to Antigua and then to Carmel to see Adams.
April: visits sister Anita in Palm Beach.
October: to Tucson for opening of Adams exhibition and to Washington, New York, and Milwaukee. During year, Viking publishes Georgia O'Keeffe.
1977
January: Receives Medal of Freedom from President Gerald Ford.
Spring: dismisses Bry as agent.
May: receives honorary degree from College of Santa Fe; initiates lawsuit against Bry (O'Keeffe v. Bry) to recover all works of art and related materials in her possession. Bry countersues, alleging she has contract to be O'Keeffe's agent for life.
November: Perry Miller Adato video premieres on National Public Television; O'Keeffe attends a 90th birthday celebration at National Gallery of Art.
1978
Writes introduction for catalogue of exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe: A
Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz, to open in November at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
November: attends Hamilton's solo exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York; at opening, Bry serves Hamilton with notice of suit (Bry v. Hamilton) alleging malicious interference and demanding $13.25 million in damages.
December: again travels to Carmel to stay with Adams.
1979
June: travels to Pacific coasts of Costa Rica and Guatemala.
August: casting begins at Johnson Atelier of sculptures designed in 1916 and 1946 (see cat. nos. 66–80 and 1123–45).
October: in New York.
1980
Publication of Laurie Lisle's Portrait of An Artist, the first
biography of O'Keeffe, completed without O'Keeffe's cooperation. Travels:
Houston (January), Washington, D.C. (February), San Francisco (March); New York
(May). Long-standing lawsuit to recover three small paintings stolen from An
American Place in 1946 (0 'Keeffe v. Snyder) settled out of
court.
1982–83
Travels: Hawaii (May 1982), San Francisco (October 1982), New York
(March 1983), Costa Rica (November 1983). Bry v. Hamilton settled
out of court.
1984
Sister Claudia dies.
March: visits sister Anita in Palm Beach; becomes ill. O'Keeffe moves, with Hamilton and his family, to large house in Santa Fe, Sol y Sombra, to be nearer to medical facilities.
1985
Sister Anita Young dies. Awarded National Medal of Arts by President Ronald
Reagan. O'Keeffe v. Bry settled out of court.
1986
6 March: O'Keeffe dies at St. Vincent's Hospital, Santa Fe.