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Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 7/8 inches
CR No. 557
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Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1969
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An iris fills the frame, its upper petals white, its center and lower petals purplish black and brown. Small areas of an abstract, white background are visible behind the flower.
CR No. 557
Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Black Iris
Source of title: Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks, 1933 New York (An American Place) exhibition checklist.
Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
The Dark Iris No. III
General Remarks
Title changed when accessioned by Metropolitan Museum of Art July 1991, from Black Iris III to Black Iris. Change initialized by William S. Lieberman. Whitney Archive indicates, "July 1949: Miss Bry (of An American Place) told me that this picture is now on permanent loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Georgia O'Keeffe as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Coll." Mentioned in 1934 New York (An American Place) exhibition in the Newark Evening News (1934); reproduced in Time (February 1943). (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Inscriptions
Stretcher: 1. "O'Keeffe #4 / [two illegible words] / H [H in circle] O'Keeffe" (GO, graphite) 2. "Silver burnish" (GO, graphite) (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Technique
Oil Painting
Materials
Oil on canvas
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)
1943
1946
1963–1964
Waldo Frank, Lewis Mumford, Dorothy Norman, Paul Rosenfeld, and Harold Rugg, ed. America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait. Garden City, N. Y., 1934, pl. XXIA.
"Life is Painting for Artist Who Reveals Woman's Soul on Canvas." Newark Evening News (March 21, 1934), p. 18.
"Art: Woman from Sun Prairie." Time (February 8, 1943), pp. 42, 44, ill.
Thomas Craven. "American Painting." Studio 127 (June 1944), pp. 181, ill.
Georgia O'Keeffe. "Stieglitz: His Pictures Collected Him." New York Times (December 11, 1949), p. 24, ill.
James Thrall Soby in New Art in America: Fifty Painters of the 20th Century. Ed. John I. H. Baur. Greenwich, Conn., 1957, ill. p. 109 (color).
Sheldon Cheney. The Story of Modern Art. Rev. and enl. ed. (1st ed, 1941). New York, 1958, p. 619, ill.
Henry Geldzahler. American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1965, pp. 130–31, ill.
Doris Reno. "Miami's Old 17th Century Friend Found Shining in a New Setting." Miami Herald (August 22, 1965), p. 21E.
Peter Plagens. "A Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective in Texas." Artforum 4 (May 1966), p. 28, ill.
Dorothy Seiberling. "Horizons of a Pioneer: Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico." Life 64 (March 1, 1968), p. 48, ill.
George Heard Hamilton. "The Alfred Stieglitz Collection." Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), p. 392.
George M. Cohen. A History of American Art. New York, 1971, p. 177.
Charles Child Eldredge. "Georgia O'Keeffe: The Development of an American Modern." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971, pp. xiv, 54, 250, fig. 30.
Nora B. Beeson. Guide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1972, p. 279.
Sam Hunter and John Jacobus. American Art of the 20th Century: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. New York, 1973, p. 124, fig. 210 (upside down).
Henry Geldzahler in "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975. New York, 1975, p. 212, ill. (upside down).
John Russell. The Meanings of Modern Art. Vol. 10, America Redefined. New York, 1975, colorpl. II.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1976, text facing pl. 30, ill.
Lisa M. Messinger in "Twentieth Century Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Notable Acquisitions, 1980–1981. New York, 1981, p. 66.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 21–22, 60, fig. 21.
Jan Garden Castro. The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1985, pp. 62, 87.
Sasha M. Newman. Georgia O'Keeffe. Washington, D. C., 1985, p. 22, pl. 10.
Erika Billeter. "Georgia O'Keeffe's Bilder." Du (May 1987), pp. 44–45, ill.
Nicholas Callaway, ed. Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers. New York, 1987, no. 2, frontis. ill.
Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 9, The United States of America. New York, 1987, p. 130, colorpl. 98, calls it "Black Iris, III".
Matt Damsker. "The Met Goes Modern: New Wing a Treasure Box, Even If Collection Has Gaps." Hartford Courant (February 11, 1987), p. C7.
Sylvia Hochfield. "Thoroughly Modern Met." Art News 86 (February 1987), p. 115.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 38, 40–41, fig. 27.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and the Critics. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1989, pp. 94, 335 n. 5, p. 339 n. 10, fig. 15.
Sarah Whitaker Peters. Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years. New York, 1991, p. 345 n. 32, p. 348 n. 70.
Charles Child Eldredge. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991, pp. 88, 90, overleaf facing p. 90.
Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury, ed. From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon. Reading, Mass., 1992, pp. 49–50, fig. 9.
Elizabeth Montgomery. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1993, p. 38, ill.
Maria Costantino. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1994, pp. 87, 99, ill. and ill. p. 40 (installation photo).
Britta Benke. Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887–1986: Blumen in der Wüste. Cologne, 1994, pp. 36–37, ill.
Jula Dech. Georgia O'Keeffe: Gemälde. Munich, 1995, unpaginated, fig. 14.
Anne Middleton Wagner. Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keeffe. Berkeley, 1996, pp. xi, 63–64, pl. 7.
H. W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson. History of Art. 5th rev. ed. (1st ed., 1962). New York, 1997, p. 817, fig. 1074.
Robert Hughes. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York, 1997, p. 394, fig. 236.
Bram Dijkstra. Georgia O'Keeffe and the Eros of Place. Princeton, 1998, p. 227.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Conn., 1999, vol. 1, p. 316, no. 557.
Eleanor Munro. Originals: American Women Artists. Reprint (1st ed., 1979). [Boulder, Co.], 2000, p. 91.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2001, pp. 72, 74, fig. 46.
Peter-Cornell Richter. Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. New York, 2001, p. 79, ill.
Barbara Buhler Lynes with Russell Bowman. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection. Exh. cat., Milwaukee Art Museum. New York, 2001, pp. 50, 60, 64, 165 (app. 1), 167 (app. 1), 169 (app. 2), fig. 19.
Vivien Green Fryd. Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. Chicago, 2003, p. 121, pl. 8 between pp. 152–53.
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2004, pp. 266, 273, ill. between pp. 376–77.
Sigrid Maria Groh. Black Iris. Berlin, 2004, unpaginated, ill.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2005, p. 94, ill.
Susan Wright. Georgia O'Keeffe: An Eternal Spirit. (1st ed., 1996). [New York], 2006, p. 62, ill.
Jonathan Stuhlman and Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction. Exh. cat., Norton Museum of Art. West Palm Beach, 2007, p. 45, fig. 6.
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. 198–99, 279, no. 183, 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. 457, 672, 725.
Isabelle Duvernois 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, p. 193.
Barbara Buhler Lynes and Jonathan Weinberg, ed. Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph. Exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio. Berkeley and Santa Fe, 2011, p. 82, ill.
Katherine Hoffman. Alfred Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light. New Haven, 2011, fig. 107 (color).
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 524, ill. (color), colorpl. 445.
Massimiliano Gioni et al., ed. Judy Chicago: Herstory. Exh. cat., New Museum, New York. London, 2023, p. 292, ill. p. 267 (color).
Annelise K. Madsen in Georgia O'Keeffe: "My New Yorks". Ed. Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise K. Madsen. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2024, p. 47, fig. 14 (color).
The artist (1926–69; 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
8629
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Georgia O'Keeffe. Black Iris, 1926. Access O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, https://access-ok.okeeffemuseum.org/object/8629.