Information for Researchers

Information in Access O'Keeffe is provided as a research resource to provide access to the best current understanding of the artist's oeuvre. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum does not authenticate works and inclusion in Access O'Keeffe is shared to further research and scholarly dialogue but not to make claims of authentication.

Please email [email protected] with questions, concerns, or updates.

Scope of Access O'Keeffe

Return to Table of Contents

Access O'Keeffe consists of the following types of entries:

Art includes all known artworks by Georgia O'Keeffe as well as works by other artists in the O'Keeffe Museum collection including photographers of O'Keeffe and her surrounding landscapes; and contemporary artists illustrating a legacy of creativity in conversation with Georgia O'Keeffe's life and work.

Archive includes a selection of objects from the Museum's extensive archive collections containing correspondence, photographs, and ephemera relating to the artist. To view a wider scope of materials including the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Institutional Archives and manuscript collections, visit the Archive Finding Aids Database.

Artist's Belongings includes items from Georgia O'Keeffe's two historic homes in northern New Mexico where the artist lived and worked for more than forty years. These belongings include furnishings, clothing, everyday objects, art materials, source materials for artworks such as bones and rocks, and books from her personal library.

Historic Exhibitions includes exhibitions in which the art of Georgia O'Keeffe was featured. Exhibitions present the artworks included in the checklists and other related archival documentation when available. This section is a work in progress currently representing checklists from 1916-1950 as well as selected more recent exhibitions.

People and Organizations includes artists, designers, makers, manufacturers, correspondents, and authors associated with items in the Access O'Keeffe as well as galleries and museums that hosted exhibitions of Georgia O'Keeffe's art.

Searching Access O'Keeffe

Return to Table of Contents

The search bar in the navigation facilitates discovering objects across Access O'Keeffe areas described above using keywords or phrases. Search looks at the following fields in order by priority: title, artist/maker, description, transcript, exhibition, inscription, other associated people roles.

To be more specific than searching by keyword, phrases may be entered. Phrases entered between quotation marks (i.e. "black place") ensure an exact phrase search. Phrases entered without quotes are treated like individual keywords.

Search results are divided using tabs named Objects/Items, People/Organizations, and Exhibitions.

To search for a work by Catalogue Raisonné (CR) Number, put the number in the search field.

Guide to Catalogue Raisonné Entries

Return to Table of Contents

Access O'Keeffe includes the 2,029 works made by Georgia O'Keeffe published with Catalogue Raisonné (CR) Numbers in Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), items listed in Appendix II: Additional Works in the Lynes publication, and objects in public institutions that were not considered at the time of the Lynes publication.

Information provided by current owner museum collections is prioritized as the most current catalogue data and presented in the artwork overview section following the header and navigation of an entry. Information for works in private collections lists catalogue information from the Lynes publication.

Changes in title, date, medium or orientation since the Lynes publication is noted in the General Remarks area in the Catalogue Raisonné section along with further details about the work.

When available, representative images are provided in the artwork overview section. Many images have a download icon near the image controls. These images are available for personal, educational non-commercial use. Restricted images do not show a download button. For more detailed information on copyright, visit the Museum's Rights and Reproduction page.

For artworks by Georgia O'Keeffe, artwork pages contain a Catalogue Raisonné Section with the following information:

Catalogue Raisonné Carousel

The Catalogue Raisonné carousel shows an artwork in Catalogue Raisonné Number Arrangement. This allows the reader to scroll back and forth to discover the context in which the artist was creating as arranged in Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999)

Title and General Remarks

Title and General Remarks are group together, along with Inscriptions as the information is often related.

Access O'Keeffe provides a title history sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), current controlling museum since the Lynes publication, and selected titles used in exhibitions.

Titles are divided into the following types:

Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

The primary title as listed in Lynes, 1999 according to the Criteria Used for Establishing Title If more than one title inscription by O'Keeffe exists for the same work, all are listed as first titles. Source notes originate from the Lynes publication.

Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

Any title in the 1999 Catalogue Raisonné not listed as a primary/first title. Alternate titles are listed without identifying the source if they derive from inscriptions by Stieglitz or one of his or O'Keeffe's associates or from checklists prepared by Stieglitz. In relevant entries, the sources of these titles are given in the notes.

Alternate Title: (Institutional Title as assigned by current controlling museum.)
A title used by an organization, generally the owning or controlling institution, when it differs from the 1999 Catalogue Raisonné title. Notes indicate source of title and, when known, the reasoning for why this title is preferred by the institution.

When an owning or controlling institution is publishing the work using an Alternate Title, that title is used as the primary title in Access O'Keeffe to be in alignment with the controlling institution's records. Otherwise, the Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné) is used.

Materials

Includes the production technique of the work and the material's description. Some works have an extended medium description.

Exhibition History

Includes exhibitions featuring Georgia O'Keeffe. Select an exhibition to see what other O'Keeffe works were featured. Exhibition histories are not complete and a work in progress.

Provenance

Provenance is listed and sourced as provided by the current controlling institution or as listed in the Lynes publication. Due to this, the reader will find different formats as provided to Access O'Keeffe by contributors.

Conservation

A limited number of works include Technical Descriptions and Conservation Narratives along with the source of the reported information.

Related Works

This section shows works that have a relationship with the entry, such as in a series, grouping or direct relationship to the work (such as a recto/verso.)

Credits & Rights

This section provides copyright information about this object.

Administrative Information

This section provides information regarding record IDs and updates.

Research Background

Return to Table of Contents

Access O'Keeffe

Records of Georgia O'Keeffe artwork in Access O'Keeffe are based on Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné(Lynes, 1999). In 2022, with support from an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum did a survey of works in public collections. From 2023-2025, the Museum contacted more than 130 public collections to verify and update information, images, and technical data. Private collection research was not part of this phase and therefore those works are published with information from the Lynes publication. Research and updates continue as managed by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

Research for Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, 1992-1999

This section is primarily sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné(Lynes, 1999), p.12-14 with minimal adaptions.

Examined Works

Remaining in the artist's estate in New Mexico when research began for Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999) in 1992 were 952 works done between 1901 and 1984: 135 paintings, 81 works on paper, 22 sculptures, 24 clay pots, and 690 sketches or studies. These, along with the other 1,077 works in the catalogue, which are housed in hundreds of public and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia, were examined by the Barbara Buhler Lynes.

In 1994, Judith C. Walsh, senior paper conservator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, was engaged to unframe the works on paper in The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation so that they could be measured and their inscriptions recorded. It was immediately apparent that a technical analysis of the papers O'Keeffe used would be invaluable in the dating and verifying of works. Among other discoveries, the research revealed that O'Keeffe consistently used certain types of paper at certain times. Lynes and Walsh therefore extended their investigations to include the largely undated sketches and studies in the Foundation, and as many of the works on paper in private and public collections that could be examined free of their frames. The resulting Paper Survey documents, in addition to sheet dimensions, the color, texture, thickness, type (when possible), and watermarks (when present) of the papers for 1,016 works dating from 1901 to 1984. This information is found in the Extended Medium Description under the Medium area of the Catalogue Raisonné section in Access O'Keeffe.

Checklists, Photographs, Inscriptions

Alfred Stieglitz kept no lists of O'Keeffe's works and no records of their sales, so the exact number she produced from 1916 to 1946, the years he served as her primary agent, will never be known. He wrote letters to purchasers (usually when the works were shipped to them), which often document the names of buyers, titles, sales dates, and provide some factual information about the works, but only a handful of these letters was available at the time of Lynes' research. Because Stieglitz's title references (for example, "White Calla") are often vague, it is usually impossible to make a positive identification of a painting from them, unless O'Keeffe also recorded the name of the buyer in her own records, and associated it with a particular work or works. Most of the relevant Stieglitz documents are housed in the Alfred Stieglitz-Georgia O'Keeffe Archive, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, but a few remain with private collectors.

Records did exist for 29 exhibitions Stieglitz organized between 1916 and 1946 that included works by O'Keeffe at one of the three New York galleries he operated: 291 (1916-17), The Intimate Gallery (1925-29), and An American Place (1929-46). He also organized exhibitions at The Anderson Galleries, New York (1923-25), whose president, Mitchell Kennerley, was a friend of Stieglitz and O'Keeffe. The number of O'Keeffe's works Stieglitz exhibited each year ranges from nine (in a 1940 group exhibition) to more than 100 (in a solo show in 1923). In 1924, he began publishing brochures and checklists for these exhibitions. Surviving checklists identify by title 519 works. This number does not include the 45 works that were exhibited more than once and given a different title each time, or those that were shown but not included on the published checklists (the latter can often be identified through titles handwritten on the checklists by O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, or one of their associates).

Beginning in 1916, Stieglitz made photographs of installations of O'Keeffe's exhibitions, many of which have been preserved and either document an exhibition completely (1917) or in part (1923, 1924, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1931-32, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1938).

Stieglitz also attached to the backings of many works labels he penned in black ink that specify title, date, and medium, as well as O'Keeffe's name as artist. He frequently wrote similar information on stretchers and versos and, occasionally, on institutional exhibition labels affixed to backings as well as on the rectos and versos of many photographs that he or others made of O'Keeffe's work. From time to time, Stieglitz also inscribed prices and handling instructions on backings, and occasionally noted that O'Keeffe had signed versos. In addition, Andrew Droth, William Einstein, and George Of, who worked for Stieglitz over the years, often inscribed stretchers, backings, and labels affixed to O'Keeffe's work with her name, the title of the work, the date, the medium, and information about frames.

O'Keeffe also inscribed her work. Through the mid-1910s, she often signed and dated works on rectos. After that, she never signed or dated works on rectos but often wrote titles on versos and stretchers, where she also frequently wrote her name in script. Inscribed versos often hold her carefully printed "G. O'Keeffe," "O'Keeffe," or "Georgia O'Keeffe," sometimes in the same paint that she had used to create the work. In several verso inscriptions, she excluded the apostrophe in her surname.

O'Keeffe also put titles on the backings affixed to works, and sometimes wrote her name there. Most frequently, she inscribed backings with her initials within a five-pointed or (less frequently) a six-pointed star; a circle, or a double square. This practice perhaps began as a kind of rating system invented by O'Keeffe and/or Stieglitz. But not all the stars, circles, and squares inscribed on works are by O'Keeffe - as the backing inscription on cat. no. 254, for example, makes clear. There, an empty star is followed by instructions in Stieglitz's hand: "For OK to sign." Thus it is impossible to determine accurately exactly which stars and other symbols on works were put there by O'Keeffe rather than by Stieglitz or their associates; but it is known that O'Keeffe herself continued to inscribe works in this way well into the 1960s, so all stars, circles, and squares on works are presumed to be by the artist, with exceptions noted.

It is clear that Stieglitz equated the star with quality, as can be seen in the inscription on cat. no. 322: "This is O'Keeffe's mark signifying first class." Stieglitz's success in equating the star with "first class" is best measured by the fact that its presence on a work continues today to be considered a mark of the work's high quality. However, stars appear much too frequently on works of widely varying quality to support such a claim. Most probably they carried the meaning Stieglitz gave to them early on, and they may have originally meant the same thing to O'Keeffe. But because neither wrote down the particulars of whatever rating system they used, the exact meaning of these stars and other symbols will never be known. Over the years, because O'Keeffe often applied stars to works of less than "first-class" quality, they seem to have come to function as a kind of trademark, a means of identifying and authenticating her output.

Records of O'Keeffe's Work

This section is primarily sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), p.14-17 with minimal adaptions.

Whitney Archive

Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

In 1944, Rosalind Irvine (later a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art) proposed making a catalogue of O'Keeffe's work, under the aegis of a project sponsored by the American Art Research Council, then housed at the Whitney and of which Irvine was Secretary. As Irvine pointed out in "Master List" (the introduction she wrote to the compilation that she and the artist completed some years later): "[O'Keeffe] took a great interest in the record and helped me in every possible way."

Relying on her memory, photographs of her work, exhibition-checklists published by Stieglitz, and Stieglitz's installation photographs, O'Keeffe worked with Irvine to document and create fact sheets on approximately 610 works, of which Irvine examined approximately 310 at first hand. Irvine also made a list of 86 works that she did not examine and for which she had no photographs. Records of O'Keeffe's work made subsequently in the 1950s sometimes refer to fact sheets made by Irvine that were not discovered at the Whitney, which suggests that additional records may have existed and are now lost. Thus, exact figures for the number of works Irvine and O'Keeffe recorded cannot be established.

Each fact sheet Irvine prepared includes the date and place she examined the work, its title, date, medium, dimensions, current owner (when known), inscriptions, exhibition history, references to it as well as quotations from published sources, and comments about it obtained from O'Keeffe or Doris Bry, who began working part-time for O'Keeffe in 1946. The result of Irvine's work with O'Keeffe is referred to in the catalogue as the “Whitney Archive”. The questionnaires Irvine prepared and sent to owners to confirm and update information about the works in their possession are called “Whitney Questionnaires”.

Because Irvine recorded when and where she examined works, her fact sheets verify that she conducted most of her research between 1944 and 1946, examining works occasionally after that until the early 1950s, and that most of the work she catalogued was stored at An American Place. As she stated: "All the pictures I have recorded (unless privately owned [approximately 45]) were at An American Place at this time even if my catalogue sheet shows that the picture was not examined." Thus, her fact sheets provide a general record of the number of works that were in O'Keeffe's possession in the mid-1940s.

Irvine explained: "I had the opportunity to examine a number of them when they were taken out of the racks - to be considered for the Museum of Modern Art O'Keeffe exhibition [1946]. I also examined pictures stored in the vault at the Place, but many of them were on high racks that I couldn't reach. O'Keeffe helped me to get some of these down, but we did not get at them all. I had to do these very hurriedly as Stieglitz was disturbed by all the commotion about the exhibition, and I didn't want to add to the general confusion." She points out: "My first step was to copy all the catalogues [checklists] of O'Keeffe exhibitions .... We went through [them] ... and O'Keeffe told me which pictures had been sold and the owners, and catalogue sheets were made for them. I then took all my photographs to O'Keeffe to be identified [Stieglitz installation photographs, and photographs of individual works made from negatives supplied either by O'Keeffe or the New York photographer Peter A. Juley]. In each case we found the exhibition in which the picture had first been shown and this information was added to the catalogue sheet."

Irvine was impressed by O'Keeffe's knowledge of her work: "[She] has an amazingly clear memory about where and when she painted things and also about privately owned pictures." Irvine's contacts with owners further confirmed her impression: "[O'Keeffe] gave me information about pictures sold from the first exhibition at '291' and the 1923 and 1924 exhibitions at the Anderson galleries, and in every case where I have followed it up by writing the owner she has been correct."

However, O'Keeffe did not remember everything she had completed before 1944; in particular, she had little recall for work that had not been exhibited or photographed. (Many of these "forgotten" works later surfaced or were discovered during Lynes's research and were included in the Lynes publication. Nor did Irvine catalogue all the works that appear in the installation photographs, probably because some were so small in these reproductions that they could not be identified or were overlooked. And, for reasons unknown, O'Keeffe did not make available to Irvine most of several hundred works on paper she had completed in the 1910s and early 1920s. But, considering her resources, Irvine's work is remarkably complete, and a great deal of what she recorded remains accurate today. Her research has been a cornerstone of all subsequent work on O'Keeffe's oeuvre.

In 1969-70, during the time that Bry and Whitney Advisory Director Lloyd Goodrich worked with O'Keeffe to organize the 1970 retrospective of O'Keeffe's work at the Whitney, Bry updated the Whitney Archive by providing Goodrich with entries for and photographs of works that O'Keeffe had completed after 1950, some of which Goodrich annotated. These entries are cited as "Whitney Archive in 1969" or " Whitney Archive in 1970 " to distinguished them from the original entries.

Abiquiú Notebooks

The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiú, New Mexico
[Now in the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Archive, Santa Fe, New Mexico]

O'Keeffe herself kept records about her work, in 29 three-ring binders, compiled by Bry from the early 1950s onward. For the most part, each binder describes a single year of O'Keeffe's output, containing numbered fact sheets originally typed by Bry and later retyped (by whom is not clear), that incorporate annotations made by Bry and others over the years. Bry's original compilation includes 922 fact sheets, but her numbering extends only to 880, with many fact sheets having intermediate numbers, such as 85A, 85B, 85C. O'Keeffe's archive is referred to in these volumes as the “Abiquiú Notebooks” or “Notebooks”.

Initially, Bry transferred the information Irvine and O'Keeffe had amassed in the 1940s onto new fact sheets, in a slightly different format. She also made 310 additional fact sheets, either for some of the works on paper that had not been made available to Irvine, or for works O'Keeffe completed from 1950 through 1966, the last year Bry added entries to this archive.

The most important difference between the Whitney Archive and the Abiquiú Notebooks is that, with some exceptions, the fact sheets in the Notebooks are accompanied by black-and-white photographs of the works. To supplement the photographs Irvine had used and inscribed with titles (inserted by Bry and others into the Notebooks), Bry arranged, over the years, to have hundreds of O'Keeffe works stored in New York photographed and the images sent to O'Keeffe to incorporate into the Notebooks. She also recorded onto the Abiquiú Notebook fact sheets the photographers' codes stamped on the versos of photographs. Thus, a pairing occurred-of written information with photograph, or text with image-that provided the first extensive visual record of O'Keeffe's work. This development in the history of the documentation of O'Keeffe's work became a particularly important reference tool, because the artist often worked in series, producing works of similar subject, title, size, date, and medium. Had O'Keeffe and those working for her not associated most of these works with images, it may never have been possible to establish their specific identity.

Bry also measured many works and, when necessary, corrected the dimensions of entries in the Notebooks. She added information about several exhibitions and a number of publications beyond those that had been recorded in the Whitney Archive. When she worked with O'Keeffe on the final exhibition at An American Place (1950), on the retrospective of O'Keeffe's art at the Whitney (1970), and on the portfolio of drawings that was published in 1974, Bry checked titles of included works for accuracy against titles entered in the Abiquiú Notebooks. Finally, also working with O'Keeffe, Bry renumbered the paintings in the Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Shell and Shingle series, and established the sequence in which O'Keeffe painted the watercolor series Evening Star and Light Coming on the Plains.

Over the years, others assisted O'Keeffe in maintaining and elaborating this archive. They include Patricia Johanson, who in the mid-1960s helped associate entries in the Abiquiú Notebooks with new photographs supplied by Bry and Edith Gregor Halpert, whose Downtown Gallery in New York represented O'Keeffe exclusively from 1950 to 1963. Johanson also helped O'Keeffe examine and measure the works stored in Abiquiú; she has stated that, during this time, O'Keeffe inscribed many of their backings with titles, dates, and her initials in a star, circle, or square.

In the mid-1950s, O'Keeffe herself began inscribing titles on photographs, mostly for works she completed after 1950; these inscriptions have been recorded in individual catalogue entries under "General Remarks" in the Catalogue Raisonné section. She also corrected titles in the Notebooks and placed numbers by titles of some of her series works. She noticed dating errors in the Notebooks for various works and tried to correct them. In conversations with Betty Pilkington, her secretary at the time, O'Keeffe provided new dates for some works, which Pilkington noted on the fact sheets, along with the year O'Keeffe had given her the information followed by her initials, "bp."

In 1977, when potter-sculptor Juan Hamilton became O'Keeffe's representative, he oversaw the updating of the Notebooks. As previously undocumented works came to light, they were recorded by O'Keeffe's secretary, Agapita Judy Lopez, who also added exhibition information to existing entries and updated ownership records as information became available. Between 1991 and 1992, Melanie Crowley, then Projects Assistant for The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, added new entries for a few of the hundreds of undocumented works that O'Keeffe owned at the time of her death. Such late additions to the Abiquiú Notebooks are noted in the catalogue as “Abiquiu Notebooks after 1977”.

Downtown Gallery Archive

Archives of American Art, Washington

Several years before Edith Halpert became O'Keeffe's exclusive agent in 1950, correspondence between them indicates that O'Keeffe sent Halpert lists of her work that Halpert used to construct a record housed at The Downtown Gallery. This includes photographs and fact sheets listing titles, dates, media, owners (if known), photographic codes, exhibitions, and references to reproductions of the works in publications. By 1953, however, O'Keeffe realized that Halpert's records were not as complete as the Abiquiú Notebooks, and she urged Halpert to send her the records she had compiled up to that point so that she could bring them up to date. Using the Abiquiú Notebooks, Pilkington updated Halpert's records by preparing and adding new fact sheets as well as new photographs made for O'Keeffe by photographer Laura Gilpin of the works stored in New Mexico. Pilkington then returned the updated records to Halpert who, in turn, continued to expand them even after 1966, when the artist severed her relationship with The Downtown Gallery. Halpert's catalogue of O'Keeffe's work, which does not include inscriptions or comments about works transcribed into the Abiquiú Notebooks by Bry from the Whitney Archive, or those added to the Abiquiú Notebooks subsequently by Pilkington, is referred to in these volumes as the “Downtown Gallery Archive”.

Halpert released these records to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in the 1950s and 1960s, and they have long been available to researchers. Halpert routinely sent O'Keeffe reports of the sales of her work, which O'Keeffe kept among her records in Abiquiú, and a great deal of this information was transcribed into the Abiquiú Notebooks, particularly after 1977. The financial and consignment records kept by Halpert, however, which were among additional material given to the Archives of American Art after her death in 1970, were sealed at the time of the gift and were therefore not available until 1994 when the Washington office of the Archives of American Art obtained permission from the appropriate parties to unseal them. Their detail and accuracy are remarkable. Perhaps more than any other single source of information, they revealed or confirmed facts that greatly facilitated finding owners for the Lynes publication including the more than 400 works that Halpert sold for O'Keeffe or re-sold over the years.

Correspondence

O'Keeffe maintained a large, lively correspondence with friends and professional associates, and she stored hundreds of the letters she received in her Abiquiú house. A great deal of this material is now part of the Stieglitz-O'Keeffe Archive at Yale. Hundreds of additional letters written by O'Keeffe are preserved in various archives and private collections around the country. They are often dated and have postmarked envelopes, providing a clear picture of her whereabouts on a yearly (sometimes a monthly or daily) basis.

Problems

This section is primarily sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), p.17-21 with minimal adaptions.

Locating Works

The three archival records of O'Keeffe's works include the names of many public and some private collectors. At the inception of Lynes' research, while some listings in the Abiquiú Notebooks had been updated and most institutional owners were current to the mid-1960s, ownership information for at least half of the works in private hands had not been updated since first recorded by Irvine. Thus, the owners listed in most of the records in the Abiquiú Notebooks were individuals who purchased works from O'Keeffe or Stieglitz from the 1910s through the mid-1940s and who, for the most part, were no longer living. Having their names, however, was an aid to locating their descendants who were either still in possession of the works or who could provide information about sales and subsequent owners.

O'Keeffe's correspondence was also very useful in the task of locating works. Dealers and private collectors often wrote to her about the works in their possession, and their letters often included snapshots of these works. Most were written just after a work had been purchased, sold, or inherited. In providing information about ownership and dates of transfer, they often served as leads to the whereabouts of works.

Hundreds of private dealers, commercial galleries, and auction houses in the USA and abroad gave the Lynes research project their full support from the beginning. In fact, some of the most important assistance in locating works was provided by dealers and auction houses, who forwarded letters to owners or previous owners and who shared information in their records when they could.

Archival Sources and Inscriptions

As Irvine prepared the Whitney Archive-often "hurriedly," as she explained-errors were made in identifying works and in associating them with specific exhibitions. Occasionally, the same work was catalogued more than once under different titles, and inscriptions were attributed incorrectly. Moreover, as Irvine transcribed titles from backings or checklists, she often altered them in minor ways, for example, "New Mexico" became "N.M." and "Sunflower, New Mexico, I" became "Sunflower, No.1." Inconsistencies were therefore created between Stieglitz's title inscriptions on works, titles on the checklists he published, and titles in the Whitney Archive.

Irvine's fact sheets, which provided the first record of O'Keeffe's work to 1946, were used to create a major portion of the Abiquiú Notebooks but were never checked for accuracy against the works themselves. The Notebooks, in turn, became the source of much of the Downtown Gallery Archive. Thus, Irvine's inadvertent errors were repeated. Moreover, with many different people involved in transfers of information from one source to another, errors of transcription occurred that compounded the inconsistencies. Comparing the fact sheets in all three sources has made it possible to identify these inconsistencies and, when possible, to correct them, along with errors pertaining to titles, dates, media, dimensions, inscriptions, and exhibitions of O'Keeffe's work.

In addition, information stated as fact in the Whitney Archive, which has been available to scholars for years, has led to the perpetuation of at least two misconceptions about O'Keeffe and her work. These are the widespread notions that O'Keeffe never "signed" her work, and that work exhibited by Stieglitz in any year was created by O'Keeffe in the preceding year.

In her "Master List," Irvine wrote that "O'Keeffe never signed or dated a picture on the front. With few exceptions . . . she never signed or dated her pictures on the back of the canvas. Her signature, initials and date are always on the cardboard backing." She also stated: "[Stieglitz checklists] were the main source for dating the pictures, as each exhibition held was of pictures done the previous year...." Lynes' research proved Irvine incorrect.

Titles

Hundreds of previously unrecorded inscriptions have been found on versos and stretchers. They verify that O'Keeffe frequently wrote her name, titles, and dates on works, a pattern that began in 1901, when she signed and dated the recto of her earliest known work (see cat. no. 1). But, curiously, these inscriptions, which were hidden by easily removable backings, were not made available to Irvine nor apparently to anyone else who worked with or for O'Keeffe.

Many of the titles O'Keeffe had inscribed on works in fact differ from those that were recorded in the Whitney Archive (and, subsequently, the Abiquiú Notebooks and Downtown Gallery Archive). Even Stieglitz apparently did not consult O'Keeffe's inscriptions: her titles also differ from his inscriptions and from the titles in the exhibition checklists he published. It goes without saying that they also differ from the published titles assigned over the years by exhibiting institutions, auction houses, dealers, and owners.

Moreover, it has also become clear that the numbers assigned to works in series, such as Black Place I, Black Place II, do not reflect the order in which these works were painted but, rather, the numbers Stieglitz assigned to them in exhibition checklists. For works in series, therefore, other than those renumbered by O'Keeffe and Bry in 1970, number sequences in titles have been ignored for the purpose of placing works chronologically in the catalogue; the relationships between image characteristics have been given precedence in arranging entries.

The idea that O'Keeffe had nothing to do with titling her work was probably begun by O'Keeffe herself who, as late as 1952, stated: "I never remember titles to my paintings as others have usually put them there because I didn't" (letter to Edith Halpert, 22 July 1952, Archives of American Art). Monumental efforts were made over the years by Stieglitz and his associates in establishing titles for O'Keeffe's works. He and his colleagues prepared hundreds of handwritten titling labels that were placed on the backings of many of her works, and Stieglitz assigned titles to works in exhibition checklists. But titles on labels and checklists often differ and, overwhelmingly, these differ from those given by O'Keeffe herself in inscriptions and in her records. She may therefore have been justified in her statement-that is, she may have believed that her own role in this regard was relatively minor.

Just as Lynes' research makes it abundantly clear that O'Keeffe played a much larger role in assigning titles to her works than had been hitherto suspected, it has also made clear that neither she nor Stieglitz were consistent in recording titles. O'Keeffe had titled many works on backings before she began working with Irvine; the latter's fact sheets document this, in that they occasionally record O'Keeffe's title inscriptions. As Irvine pointed out, O'Keeffe also assigned titles to paintings at the time they worked together in amassing information for the catalogue. But Irvine herself also titled pictures and noted having done so on individual fact sheets. Both her titles and those O'Keeffe assigned in her presence often differ from those that Stieglitz and his colleagues inscribed on backings or from those published in Stieglitz's exhibition checklists.

Lynes resolved the complex problem of establishing first titles in the following way. O'Keeffe's title inscriptions on works establish the first title, regardless of when they may have been written (in most cases, it is not possible to determine precisely when O'Keeffe inscribed her work, particularly their backings). If a work bears no O'Keeffe inscription, titles in the records she created first with Irvine, then with Bry or Halpert, have precedence in that order: she worked closely with these associates, and the titles she created with them are likely to reflect more closely her own preferences than titles assigned by Stieglitz and his associates. Concurrence between any two of these three archival sources establishes first title in the Lynes publication. When there is no concurrence, Irvine's titles are given precedence because they reflect O'Keeffe's earliest recorded preferences. For works listed only in the Abiquiú Notebooks and the Downtown Gallery Archive, when titles differ, the Abiquiú Notebook titles prevail, because this record predates that of The Downtown Gallery.

Access O'Keeffe assigns the primary title given by the current controlling museum if different from the title assigned by Lynes. This is done to be consistent with subsequent research. Access O'Keeffe also uses diacritics in titles to more accurately express local place names, such as using Abiquiú instead of Abiquiu. The title assigned by the Lynes publication are found in the Title and General Remarks area of the Catalogue Raisonné section in artwork entries.

Dates

Stieglitz put a premium on the new, and he frequently used the words "never before seen" or "new" to describe works by any artist he was exhibiting. It seems likely that he and O'Keeffe led Irvine to think that the works included in an exhibition had always been completed the previous year. But this is not the case. Several exhibitions that announced or implied "new" work included items from earlier years, as annotated checklists and other evidence make clear. The fact that a work was exhibited in, for example, 1938 does not always mean that it was made in 1937.

Irvine commented further about dating: "While examining the pictures ... I found that in a great many cases O'Keeffe had written the wrong date on the back of the pictures. This is of no great importance, as they were always within a year or two of the correct date; but I corrected most of them at O'Keeffe's request. ... Miss O'Keeffe gave it a great deal of careful thought and all the dates in my record can stand as being correct and coming from her with the exception of a few pictures about which she was not absolutely sure, in which case I have noted the fact .... [She] has an amazingly clear memory about where and when she painted things and also about privately owned pictures."

Although O'Keeffe established the dates of her works with Irvine without removing their backings (which in many cases hid the precise and dependable dates she had written on versos and stretchers soon after completing the works), the dates actually inscribed by O'Keeffe differ at most by only two or three years from those recorded on the backings or in the three archival sources. Where she was most incorrect was in establishing dates for the works on paper completed in New York, Virginia, or Texas between 1916 and 1918-probably because these works dated from some thirty years before they were incorporated into the Abiquiú Notebooks by Bry. In the early 1950s, when the cataloguing of these works was completed, O'Keeffe's memory about when she made them was not exact.

A further complication in the dating of works before 1949 lies in O'Keeffe's habit of beginning a painting in one place, such as New York or New Mexico, and moving it around until it was finished. In some cases, paintings were transported to and from New York and New Mexico several times before they were completed. Occasionally, a work was completed and exhibited, then reworked and exhibited again.

An important discovery about dating came from finding Stieglitz-inscribed dates on the stretchers of 23 works that he included in the 1923 O'Keeffe exhibition at The Anderson Galleries. These date inscriptions, placed above Stieglitz's exhibition numbers, were made before January 1923 when the exhibition opened, and so they were done when Stieglitz's and O'Keeffe's memories of the works in question were fresh. These dates often differ by several years from, but are clearly more accurate than, those recorded by O'Keeffe and Irvine some twenty years later. Thus new dates have been established for a number of works included in that exhibition, as well as for works on which relevant O'Keeffe inscriptions were found. This new information, however, seldom revises a heretofore accepted date by more than two years.

If all the oil paintings in the 1923 exhibition were on their original supports, and if it had been possible to examine them free of backings, other Stieglitz inscriptions would undoubtedly have been discovered which could either verify or challenge established dates for the works in this exhibition. It is more than likely that an unencumbered examination of these and other works would reveal inscriptions that challenge some of the dates assigned by Lynes.

Access O'Keeffe assigns the dates given by the current controlling museum if different from the dates assigned by Lynes. This is done to be consistent with subsequent research. This change is noted in the Title and General Remarks area of the Catalogue Raisonné section in artwork entries.

Dimensions and Orientation

This Lynes publication did not rely on previously documented or published dimensions of works; the dimensions recorded were taken from the works themselves as part of Lynes' research. It should be noted, however, that the Whitney Archive (when it includes dimensions) and the Abiquiú Notebooks record the height before the width; in the Downtown Gallery Archive, with few exceptions, width comes before height. This has created confusion as to whether certain paintings, particularly abstractions and some of natural forms, should be oriented vertically or horizontally. In several cases, orientation remains a subject of debate.

Works for which photographs exist in the Abiquiú Notebooks are shared according to their orientation in this source, because O'Keeffe helped establish these records and regularly reviewed them for accuracy. When the orientation of a work in these records differs from that in a Stieglitz exhibition installation photograph, such differences are noted under "General Remarks” in the Catalogue Raisonné section of Access O'Keeffe. Works that are not visually documented in O'Keeffe's records but appear in Stieglitz installation photographs are oriented according to that source, and this is also noted under "General Remarks."

For works not documented in either O'Keeffe's records or Stieglitz's installation photographs, Lynes established orientation based on image characteristics. O'Keeffe often signed her name on the versos of works, and it could be argued that these inscriptions should be used to establish correct orientation. But, in many cases, photographs in the Abiquiú Notebooks establish an orientation that contradicts that of the signature; such inscriptions, therefore, are not accurate indicators of a work's orientation. Moreover, the Abiquiú Notebooks sometimes include two photographs of the same work, each of which supports a different orientation, and, in some cases, the photographs themselves have not been assigned an orientation. Ultimately, however, the orientation of a work was not of great importance to either O'Keeffe or Stieglitz. Both were of the opinion that a work of quality whose forms did not inherently establish a definitive orientation could be oriented in any direction.

Access O'Keeffe assigns the dimensions of a work provided by the current controlling museum when different from Lynes' measurement. Orientation changes are recorded in the General Remarks area of the Catalogue Raisonné section in artwork entries.

Criteria Used for Establishing Title

This section is primarily sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), p.23 with minimal adaptions.

For works in public collections, Access O'Keeffe publishes the title as used by that collection. For works in private collections, Access O'Keeffe uses the title from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999).

The Lynes publication used the following criteria for establishing the primary title, (in order of priority):

O'Keeffe inscriptions

Titles in extant inscriptions by O'Keeffe prevail regardless of the actual or supposed date of inscription. If more than one title inscription by O'Keeffe exists for the same work, all are listed as first titles in alphabetical order, separated by a virgule (/). [These are listed as separate line items and both categorized as Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné) in Access O'Keeffe.

Titles listed in the Whitney Archive, the Downtown Gallery Archive, and/or the Abiquiú Notebooks

In the absence of an O'Keeffe inscription, title agreement between the Whitney Archive, the Downtown Gallery Archive, and the Abiquiú Notebooks establishes first title. If titles vary among these sources, an agreement between two establishes first title. If titles are different in each, the Whitney Archive prevails for works completed before 1946, and the Abiquiú Notebooks prevails for works after 1946.

Stieglitz inscriptions

For works neither inscribed by O'Keeffe with titles nor titled in the Whitney Archive, the Downtown Gallery Archive, or the Abiquiú Notebooks, Stieglitz inscriptions are used, unless a work belongs to a series otherwise titled by an O'Keeffe inscription or in the Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, or the Abiquiú Notebooks.

Stieglitz exhibition checklists

If there are no Stieglitz inscriptions, Stieglitz exhibition checklists establish first title.

Inscriptions by associates of O'Keeffe or Stieglitz

If the work does not appear in a Stieglitz checklist, inscriptions by associates of O'Keeffe and Stieglitz establish first titles. These associates are Doris Bry, Andrew Thoth, William Einstein, Juan Hamilton, and George Of.

O'Keeffe labels

For works not inscribed with a title and not listed in the Whitney Archive, the Downtown Gallery Archive, the Abiquiú Notebooks, or in a Stieglitz checklist, O'Keeffe white labels establish first title.

Abiquiú Notebooks after 1977

For works not inscribed with a title, not listed in the Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, or Abiquiú Notebooks, not in a Stieglitz checklist, or bearing no O'Keeffe label, Abiquiú Notebooks after 1977 establishes title.

No documentation

In the absence of all the above, a work is listed as "Untitled," followed by a descriptive title in parentheses.

Specials

O'Keeffe or Stieglitz inscribed the word "Special" on backings and versos of 33 works completed between 1915 and 1934. Works now inscribed with "Special" were among the first O'Keeffe's Stieglitz saw and exhibited in 1916 and 1917 at 291. It is obvious that the word was significant to both of them, but neither Stieglitz nor O'Keeffe clarified its meaning.

Although Doris Bry has indicated that it was O'Keeffe's later preference that the word "Special" be eliminated from all early titles, O'Keeffe inscribed the word on 13 extant backings. Moreover, the Abiquiú Notebooks record another 15 inscriptions in which "Special" appeared on now-lost backings and also indicate that seven of these inscriptions were by O'Keeffe. Thus, in at least twenty cases, O'Keeffe wrote "Special" on backings, indicating that she clearly approved of the word when the inscriptions were made. "Special" in titles has been preserved here because of its historical significance.

In the case of the Specials only, inscriptions from lost backings recorded in the Abiquiú Notebooks establish first titles.

Dates Guide

This section is primarily sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999), p.23 with minimal adaptions.

Access O'Keeffe assigns the dates given by the current controlling museum if different from the dates assigned by Lynes. This is done to be consistent with subsequent research. This change is noted in Title and General Remarks area of the Catalogue Raisonné section in artwork entries.

Dates were assigned without comment in the Lynes publication when there is no disagreement among inscriptions, the Whitney Archive, the Downtown Gallery Archive, and the Abiquiú Notebooks.

When these sources date a work differently, the date listed in each is noted under "Remarks” in the Catalogue Raisonné section of the entry, accompanied by an explanation of the date assigned.

Variations in date notations are as follows:

Assignable to a single year (1940).
Probably assignable to a single year (ca. 1940).
Assignable only to a range of years (1940-1942).
Probably assignable only to a range of years (ca. 1940-1942).
Assignable only to a decade (1940s).
Assignable only to a range of decades (1940s-1950s).
Probably assignable only to a range of decades (ca. 1940s-1950s).

Catalogue Raisonné Number Arrangement

Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999) arranged work chronologically. Within each year, entries are further grouped by dominant subject matter in the following order: works ostensibly without subject matter reference; human made structures or objects; animal or human figures; objects found in the environment (such as bones, feathers, shells); organic forms isolated from their environmental context (such as fruits, flowers, leaves); and landscapes or contextualized landscape forms. For works that can be associated with more than one category, the predominating forms establish the category.

For works done in the period 1916-18, however, considerations of chronology within a year take precedence over subject matter, to keep together works executed in a particular geographical location. During these years, O'Keeffe changed locations frequently and worked for varying periods of time in Colorado, New York, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

The bound sketchbooks are also arranged chronologically, based on the date of the first work found in each. Within a book, arrangement is based on page order, recto preceding verso, even though several of the books contain works dating from more than one decade. Unbound sketches have been integrated into the chronology of the catalogue and, to the degree possible, grouped with works in other media to which they relate. In addition, loose sketches that can be associated with bound sketches are cross-referenced in their respective entries.

Paper Survey

Return to Table of Contents

This section is sourced from Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné (Lynes, 1999) p.25-26 written by Judith Walsh.

From 1994 onward, I [Judith Walsh] accompanied Barbara Buhler Lynes whenever possible to see Georgia O'Keeffe's works on paper, recording observations on the materials that constituted each work, paying attention not only to the paper and the media but, importantly, to the artist's manipulation of both. Over four years, information was gathered at close hand on more than a thousand sheets of paper used by O'Keeffe for her drawings, watercolors, pastels, and quick sketches. This information has been used in the catalogue entries to describe the sheets and media for many of the works on paper [this information is recorded in Access O'Keeffe under the Extended Media Description in the Medium area of the Catalogue Raisonné section.]

The terms used to describe thickness, color, and texture are those outlined by Elizabeth Lunning and Roy Perkinson in The Print Council of America Paper Sample Book: A Practical Guide to the Description of Paper (The Print Council of America, 1996). These are common-sense terms which can be easily understood, but readers who would like to make physical comparisons to standard samples are recommended to consult the above book.

Additional information about the sheet is included if it is important in clarifying the paper type. Specific identifiers, such as manufacturers' stamps, labels, or watermarks, are also listed. Known watermarks are described in full in each instance, even if only a portion was found on the sheet. This may help readers identify the sheet from their own experience and note the consistent way O'Keeffe used certain papers.

We came to think of this project as comparable, in its scope and approach, to the efforts of natural historians, who gradually acquire an understanding of complex natural phenomena through the interpretation of simple, meticulously recorded, observations. In our case, each sheet of paper was measured, its thickness recorded using a hand-held micrometer, and its color and surface texture noted. The feel of the sheet to the hand was described; sheets were flexed to hear their "rattle," and we sometimes identified sizing or fixative by smell. Judgments had to be made about the manufacturer's projected use for the paper-for example, was it sold as drawing paper or as stationery?

O'Keeffe's career covered a long timespan, so I was prepared to find a broad range of papers used; I also expected that her use of them would be experimental, as was the case with many of her modernist contemporaries. Instead, however, we discovered that O'Keeffe consistently chose papers that were stunning for their simplicity: they tend to be almost invisible to the viewer, not competing with nor imparting texture to her painting and drawing. Her sheets are almost all of medium thickness, with slight to moderate texture, and pale cream in color. And the sheets she chose for each medium were designed for that medium-she did not put watercolors on charcoal paper, or pastels on watercolor paper. O'Keeffe's sketch drawings fall into two categories: drawings on sheets from sketchbooks, and quick notations that she made constantly. The sketchbook sheets tend to conform to the narrow range of art papers she used for watercolor or charcoal. Her spontaneous sketches, in pencil or ballpoint pen, however, tend to be on bright white paper; she apparently made them on any scrap of paper she had to hand-notepads from hotels or airplanes, paper used for typing or correspondence, even rolls of paper designed for adding machines. She used blank paper from the back of her checkbook and, in one case, coarse brown wrapping paper from a magazine she received in the mail. These mostly brighter white papers are distinguished by their "found" quality; they were not specifically selected for a formal artistic expression.

Special attention was paid to the sheets used for formal works on paper. Their thickness was found to fall within a very narrow range: over the 35-year period between 1915 and 1950, for example, she consistently chose medium-weight papers for watercolors, with fewer than twenty sheets falling outside the range of .15 to .25 mm. (As a guide, very thin tissue paper may be as little as .05 mm, while thick illustration board can measure sixty times as much, or 3 mm.)

O'Keeffe was also consistent in choosing papers of relatively little texture. Twentieth-century technology makes papers of a wide range of textures available. Novelty papers that had the texture of cloth or wood grain or animal skin were readily available to O'Keeffe in Texas in 1916. They were understandably not of interest to her, but even among papers specifically made for artists, everything from a very rough watercolor paper to a smooth, polished card were produced. O'Keeffe chose sheets within a narrow range of the possible choices.

She consistently chose a paper with the minimum texture practicable for the medium. In charcoal, she chose "Ingres" type drawing papers from various manufacturers. These are laid papers designed for use with pencil or charcoal; they show an even, moderate texture to give the friable media some hold or purchase on the surface of the sheet. In pastel, she experimented with many sheet types and finally settled on an evenly coated, gritty paper something like sandpaper, which was specifically designed for pastel work. In watercolor, O'Keeffe rejected the traditional handmade rag watercolor paper she had used in school. In fact, among her studio materials is a folder she inscribed: "Whatman paper-No good for painting." She sold the vintage watercolor papers it contained to an art supply shop in Santa Fe in the early 1970s. Instead of traditional watercolor paper, starting from 1915, her watercolors most often appear on a lesser quality sheet, an esparto fiber paper sold by the manufacturer as "watercolor cartridge." This paper she apparently selected for its innocuous surface texture and drab cream color.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, artists have had an increasingly wide range of choice in paper color. Almost any hue imaginable was available in the early years of the twentieth century: one has only to think of Paul Gauguin's prints on brilliant acid yellow paper, or of the range of colors found in Picasso's collages from 1913-14, to give context to O'Keeffe's choices in paper color. Except for a few singular examples in charcoal and pastel, she consistently chose neutral, cream-colored papers for her formal work. The overwhelming number of her charcoals and watercolors, and most of her pastels, are on pale cream paper. (A few sheets that seem to fall outside this rule are deceptive. For example, the 1917 series Light Coming on the Plains series [cat. nos. 209-11] may appear to be on ocher paper, but it started out as cream. The newsprint O'Keeffe used for that series has darkened considerably since 1917.)

The neutral attributes of O'Keeffe's papers give a support for her ethereal images that is almost invisible. There is evidence that this was a highly conscious decision. Two watercolors from 1917-Untitled (Colorado Landscape) (cat. no. 218) and Untitled (Long Lake, Colorado) (cat. no. 219)-are, unusually, both on moderately textured, pinkish handmade paper with a mottled surface from a variegated fiber and a subtle, sturdy texture, with a handsome deckle edge. These sheets are conspicuous among O'Keeffe's papers of this date for their relatively exaggerated texture, color, and character. They come from a sketchbook inscribed to her by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 in June 1917, which he had apparently purchased in Munich some years earlier. She obviously treasured this sketchbook keeping it (and another just like it) throughout her life. She even used it as a portfolio for other sketches but, in spite of the fact that it was an early token of affection from the man who encouraged and supported her at this early, critical moment, she never used more than a few sheets from it for her own work.

Observations on the way O'Keeffe prepared paper for use or storage were also collected during our research. Cut edges, torn edges, deckle edges, adhesive residue from a pad or drawing block, even the marks left by tack holes, paper clips, or creases, were all recorded. By comparing dimensions, some full sheets that had been quartered by the artist could eventually be reconstructed; sheets that had been bundled by rolling or clipping together were re-grouped. We found that one of O'Keeffe's persistent working habits was to use a group of sheets of the same type and approximately the same size when she worked on an image in series. When she used a block of paper, the sizes are, of course, quite regular. Often, however, we found that sheets differed by small fractions of an inch, with one or two irregularly torn or cut edges. It was clear that O'Keeffe took large sheets, folded them in halves or quarters, then slit or cut them along the folds to provide a short stack of papers of roughly equal size, very often about 9 x 12 inches. This pattern is found in her work from about 1915 to the 1960s. Techniques particular to different media-such as erasures, underdrawing, or corrections to the design-were also recorded.

As the number of works we examined grew, the database we amassed became a powerful tool for interpreting O'Keeffe's habits and preferences as an artist. With the author's dating of the works, we could arrange details chronologically, thereby giving evidence of the development of her aesthetic. We were able, for example, to compare a paper O'Keeffe used for a particular medium at a particular period with all the papers she ever used. In this way, we discovered that specific paper characteristics could be seen to fit perfectly with effects the artist was apparently seeking. When the sought-for effect appeared to change, so did the paper type. Oddities in her work could then be understood as a concession by the artist to a technique required by the particular image she was working on.

For example, O'Keeffe used newsprint only once for watercolor, for the 1917 series of threeworks, Light Coming on the Plains. The suffusing light of dawn that dispels the deep blue of night was achieved by adding ox-gall or another dispersal agent to the wet watercolor, causing one color to separate from the other. The slightly fuzzy cartridge paper that O'Keeffe routinely used during this period did not have a slick enough surface to allow the paint to move as needed to achieve this effect. New newsprint, the same color as her preferred cartridge paper, was a good substitute for it when she needed a slippery surface. In this case, as in others, the artist's choice of papers for formal works was seen to be deliberate and meaningful.

Our analysis, as well as giving critical information about the paper and media O'Keeffe used, became indispensable to the catalogue in another way. Inevitably, questions of authenticity were raised over some works and, with a view to assisting in settling such doubts, a decision was made to expand our technical research beyond those papers used by O'Keeffe for her formal work. We examined many hundreds of sketches held by The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, blank sheets found among the artist's studio materials, and even papers used for her correspondence. A private collector generously made available to us 35 cartons and several flat portfolios of O'Keeffe's studio materials, including many types of paper. Each sheet, brush, pastel stick, and tube of paint was catalogued. O'Keeffe's published letters offered information on which papers were of interest to her; those used by Stieglitz in his publications were considered, as were sheets used by artists within his circle. We looked at contemporary photographs taken of O'Keeffe at work and of her studio. Preserved tax records were consulted to review her sales receipts for art supplies. Notations she made on technique in books from her own library were transcribed, and queries about technique and other aesthetic concerns were culled from her correspondence with Caroline Keck, her longtime conservator. Finally, a few artists who knew O'Keeffe offered reminiscences of her working methods.

At the same time, an effort was undertaken to identify any questionable sheets by name and manufacturer, which required direct comparison with identified papers of known vintage. Information on the paper trade was gathered from published sources, the corporate archives of paper manufacturers, and from the vintage Paper Sample Collection at the National Gallery of Art. In several important cases, we were able to identify questionable sheets and ascertain their date of manufacture and availability in the U.S. (previously, it has been common practice to identify and date papers by watermarks alone).

It is our hope that this kind of technical connoisseurship-the broad study of art materials and studio practice as a foundation for the investigation of an artist's materials and method-will come to be recognized as an important tool for art historians both in the understanding of an artist's achievement and in the assessment of authenticity of works of art. Moreover, our experience from this cooperative connoisseurship has been to lead us to a deeper appreciation of the works of Georgia O'Keeffe. We came to have an intimate level of knowledge of her and of the art she produced. By increasing our understanding of the process by which she created her pictures, we have been able to discover how deliberately she pursued her unique vision and developed her personal aesthetic.