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Watercolor with graphite on paper, 25 x 19 inches
CR No. 64
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Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1969
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Two thin vertical lines extend from a horizontal line running along the bottom of the paper. One of the lines zigzags downward near the center of the composition, forming a sideways Z shape. The dark blue forms contrast with the plain white paper on which they appear.
CR No. 64
Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Blue Lines
Source of title: Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks.
Alternate Title
Blue Lines X
Source of title: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
General Remarks
Lost backing inscription [possibly exhibition label] recorded in Metropolitan Museum of Art file: 'Blue Lines No. 10/1916/Georgia O'Keeffe/Special ☆ {5-point star}.'Whitney Archive indicates, 'Note: O'Keeffe says done spring 1916. Infor. from Miss Bry . . .July 1949: On permanent loan from Georgia O'Keeffe as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Coll. 'Abiquiú Notebooks indicates, 'Note: Also titled 'Blue Lines No. 10.''Abiquiú Notebooks dates 1915. O'Keeffe, Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive date 1916. Completed in New York before June move to Virginia. Pictured in 1917 New York (291) and 1923 New York (Anderson) Stieglitz installation photographs, see Appendix III, figures 4, 18. Anita Pollitzer made a sketch of this work in a December 1916 letter to O'Keeffe, having seen it at 291 '. . . on the walls –– nearest to his (Alfred Stieglitz) back room'(Lovingly Georgia [1990], p. 222). ''Blue Lines' was first done with charcoal. Then there were probably five or six paintings of it with black watercolor [see cat. no. 63] before I got to this painting with blue watercolor that seemed right" (Georgia O'Keeffe [1976], unpaginated text accompanying entry 1). Mentioned in 1934 New York (An American Place) exhibition review in New York Times (February 1934). Reproduced and titled Abstraction No. 11 in The Meeting of East and West (1947). See cat. nos. 62,63. (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Technique
Watercolor
Materials
Watercolor with graphite on paper
Extended Medium Description
Watercolor and graphite on moderately thick, cream, slightly textured laid paper*
Watermark: Blind stamp at corner, STRATHMORE with thistle
1999–2000
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (as Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things)
Dallas Museum of Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things)
1966
1966
Amon Carter Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFA H) (as Georgia O'Keeffe: An Exhibition of the Work of the Artist from 1915 to 1966)
1970–1971
Whitney Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Art Institute of Chicago (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
1987–1989
National Gallery of Art (NGA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Art Institute of Chicago (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Dallas Museum of Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
1992–1993
The Phillips Collection (as Two Lives Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs)
IBM Gallery of Science and Art (as Two Lives Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs)
Minneapolis Institute of Arts (as Two Lives Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFA H) (as Two Lives Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs)
1917
1916
1943
1946
Henry Tyrell. "New York Art Exhibition and Gallery Notes: Esoteric Art at '291'." Christian Science Monitor (May 4, 1917), p. 10.
Edward Alden Jewell. "Georgia O'Keeffe in an Art Review." New York Times (February 2, 1934), p. 15.
Edward Alden Jewell. "O'Keeffe: 30 Years." New York Times (May 19, 1946), p. X6, calls it "Blue Lines".
F[ilmer]. S[tuart]. C[uckow]. Northrop. The Meeting of East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding. New York, 1947, pp. 162–64, ill. frontispiece, calls it "Abstraction No. 11" and "Abstraction No. 11, The Two Blue Lines".
Barbara Rose. "Georgia O'Keeffe's Late Paintings." Artforum 9 (November 1970), p. 46.
Charles Child Eldredge. "Georgia O'Keeffe: The Development of an American Modern." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971, pp. 24, 98, 103, fig. 10.
Henry Geldzahler in "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975. New York, 1975, p. 212, ill.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1976, opp. pl. 1.
Laurie Lisle. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1980, pp. 106, 338.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 11, 59–60, ill. p. 10.
Laurie Lisle. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Albuquerque, 1986, pp. 78, 265.
Beverly Gherman. Georgia O'Keeffe: The "Wideness and Wonder" of Her World. New York, 1986, p. 77.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 19–21, fig. 10.
Michael Berry. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, p. 39, ill.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Some Memories of Drawings. Ed. Doris Bry. Albuquerque, 1988, pp. 7, 13–15, 97, pl. 1.
Anita Pollitzer. A Woman on Paper: Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 46–47, ill.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and the Critics. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1989, pp. 22, 168, 325 n. 68, p. 327 n. 84, reprints Ref. Tyrell 1917.
Roxana Robinson. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life. New York, 1989, pp. 156, 172, 179, 403.
Sarah Whitaker Peters. Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years. New York, 1991, pp. 99–100.
Charles Child Eldredge. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991, p. 31, ill. p. 29 (erroneous orientation).
Elizabeth Montgomery. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1993, pp. 60–61, ill.
Maria Costantino. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1994, pp. 20, 150, ill.
Britta Benke. Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887–1986: Blumen in der Wüste. Cologne, 1994, p. 83, ill.
Anne Middleton Wagner. Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keeffe. Berkeley, 1996, p. 57.
Barbara Rose in The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Ed. Peter H. Hassrick. New York, 1997, pp. 104, 109, ill. p. 105.
Bram Dijkstra. Georgia O'Keeffe and the Eros of Place. Princeton, 1998, pp. 155, 159, fig. 48.
Sharyn R. Udall. O'Keeffe and Texas. Exh. cat., Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum. San Antonio, 1998, p. 93, ill.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Conn., 1999, vol. 1, p. 61, no. 64, ill.
Eleanor Munro. Originals: American Women Artists. Reprint (1st ed., 1979). [Boulder, Co.], 2000, p. 85.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2001, pp. 29–30, fig. 12.
Barbara Buhler Lynes with Russell Bowman. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection. Exh. cat., Milwaukee Art Museum. New York, 2001, pp. 63, 169.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2005, p. 5, fig. 2.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2005, pp. 24–25, 34, ill.
Susan Wright. Georgia O'Keeffe: An Eternal Spirit. (1st ed., 1996). [New York], 2006, pp. 6–7, ill.
Karen Moss et al. Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce. Exh. cat., Orange County Museum of Art. Newport Beach, 2009, pp. 74–75, fig. 44.
Barbara Haskell et al., ed. Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction. New Haven, 2009, pp. 10–11, fig.16.
Lisa Mintz Messinger in Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 14, 196, 199, 277–78, no. 178, ill. (color).
Sarah Greenough, ed. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Vol. 1, 1915–1933. New Haven, Conn., 2011, pp. 20, 29, 77, 79, 81, 84, 89, 125, 144 n. 309, p. 231 n. 462, pp. 446, 453, 457, 659, ill. p. 21.
Britta Benke. Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986: Flowers in the Desert. Cologne, 2011, p. 83, ill. (color).
Barbara Buhler Lynes in O'Keeffe and Moore. Ed. Anita Feldman. Exh. cat., San Diego Museum of Art. San Diego, 2023, pp. 170, 174, fig. 3 (color).
Samantha Friedman. Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York, 2023, pp. 23, 25, 27, 45–46, 168, fig. 16 (installation photo, Exh. New York 1917), colorpl. 9.
Glenn D. Lowry in Samantha Friedman. Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York, 2023, pp. 6–7, ill. (color, drawing featured on invitation to the opening of Exh. New York 1946).
Ashley Lazevnick. Fantasies of Precision: American Modern Art, 1908–1947. Minneapolis, 2023, pp. 131–32, 135, 144, 155–56, colorpl. 15.
The artist (1916–69; on extended loan to MMA, 1949–69; her gift as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to MMA) (Source: The Met, 2025)
© Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
Version History
Core fields last updated 3/30/2026
Last verified by current collection
Source System ID
8261
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