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Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Access O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
D. H. Lawrence Pine Tree, 1929
Courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
Image: okeeffe_CR687_d-h-lawrence-pine-tree_870000.jpg
Georgia O'Keeffe
D. H. Lawrence Pine Tree, 1929
Oil on canvas, 31 x 39 1/8 inches
CR No. 687
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund
Oil on canvas, 31 x 39 1/8 inches
Collection:The Wadsworth
The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund
CR No. 687

A tall tree, seen from below, protrudes into the center of the composition. Its trunk and twisting branches are dark brown, and its fluffy layers of foliage are black and green. Bits of a starry night sky are visible behind the tree.

CR No. 687

Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

D. H. Lawrence Pine Tree

Source of title: backing inscription 1.

Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

Pine Tree with Stars at Brett's, N.M.

Source of title: Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks.

The Lawrence Tree

Source of title: Whitney Archive, Downtown Gallery Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks. (Title used by The Wadsworth.)

General Remarks

Orientation is a subject of debate. June Creative Art (1931) reproduced this painting as vertical with the tree trunk emerging from the lower left corner. In a 1931 letter to Henry McBride, O'Keeffe objected: '. . . the bottom of it as it is printed should be the left hand side. That tree should stand on its head.'(Letter 56, Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters [1987]). Pictured in 1930 New York (An American Place) Stieglitz photograph as a horizontal (see Appendix III, figure 39) in the orientation O'Keeffe describes and as reproduced here. O'Keeffe wrote: 'I spent several weeks at the Lawrence ranch. . . . There was a long weathered carpenter's bench under the tall tree in front of the little house . . . . I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree –– past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree' (Georgia O'Keeffe [1976] unpaginated, text accompanying entry 57). Oddly enough, the painting is reproduced in Georgia O'Keeffe [1976] as a horizontal with the tree trunk emerging from the lower right corner. Regarding the title, it is reproduced as Lawrence Pine Tree, with Stars in Studio (June 1931) and reproduced and titled D. H Lawrence's Tree, in Creative Art (June 1931). (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Inscriptions

Backing: 1. "D. H. Lawrence Pine Tree – / 1929" (graphite) 2. OK {5stars} (graphite) 3. "New York – N.Y." (Art Institute of Chicago label, black ink) 4. Label: handwritten, "An American Place' / 509 Madison Avenue / New York — N.Y. / Georgia O'Keeffe" 5. Stamp: "Georgia O'Keeffe / An American Place / Room 1710— 509 Madison Ave. / New York — N.Y." 6. "Box 39 / on 7" (Doris Bry, black ink) (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Backing: Phillips Collection exhibition label; Clark Art Institute exhibition label; Wadsworth Atheneum “Surrealism and Modernism: 20th century” exhibition label; Whitney Museum of American Art label; two Wadsworth Atheneum labels; San Francisco Museum of Art label; additional Art Institute of Chicago label; National Gallery of Art exhibition label (Source: The Wadsworth, 2026)

Technique

Oil Painting

Materials

Oil on canvas

Purchased from the artist by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, 1981. (Source: The Wadsworth, 2025)

Credits & Rights

© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Administrative Information

Version History

Core fields last updated 3/30/2026

Last verified by current collection Mar 02 2026

Source System ID

8740

Other IDs

687, Catalogue Raisonné