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Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Access O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Ranchos Church, 1930
Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Image: okeeffe_CR704_ranchos-church_884934.jpg
Georgia O'Keeffe
Ranchos Church, 1930
Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches
CR No. 704
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1961
Oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1961
CR No. 704

A tan-colored adobe church, seen from the side, stands on uneven ground in a similar shade of light brown. Behind the structure is a textured, clouded sky.

CR No. 704

Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

Ranchos Church

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

General Remarks

Whitney Archive indicates, "Infor. from Miss Bry at An Amer. Place, July 1949. . . . On permanent loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Georgia O'Keeffe as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Coll." Whitney Archive, Abiquiú Notebooks indicate that this painting was included in the 1931 New York (An American Place) exhibition, whose checklist includes three works titled "Ranchos Church, New Mexico." This work is not among the three paintings of churches pictured in the 1931 New York (An American Place) Stieglitz installation photographs, see cat. nos. 660, 703, 705 and Appendix III, figures 42, 47, 48. See cat. no. 705, a painting exhibited in 1931 and, again, in 1931–32 after being reworked in the area of the sky. Titled Ranchos de Taos Church – 31 – N.M. by O'Keeffe on Abiquiú Notebooks photograph. See also cat. nos. 1843, 1845, 1871, 1872. (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Inscriptions

Stretcher: "#9" (unidentified hand, graphite). Verso: "Georgia O'Keeffe 1930" (white paint). Backing: 1. OK {5star} (graphite) 2. "New York – N.Y." (AIC label, black ink) 3. AAP2 4. AAP8 (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Signed and dated (verso, in white paint): Georgia O'Keeffe 1930; initialed (on backing, in center of five-pointed star): OK (Source: The Met, 2025)

Technique

Oil Painting

Materials

Oil on canvas

Ray Bethers. How Paintings Happen. New York, 1951, p. 119, ill.

George Heard Hamilton. "The Alfred Stieglitz Collection." Metropolitan Museum Journal 3 (1970), p. 392.

Charles Child Eldredge. "Georgia O'Keeffe: The Development of an American Modern." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971, p. 66.

Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1976, text facing pl. 63, ill.

Paul Goldberger. "Art: Architectural View by American Painters." New York Times (October 30, 1980), p. C22.

Theodore Wolff. "Art that Walks a Tightrope." Christian Science Monitor (November 24, 1980), p. 18.

Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 38, 40–41, 60, ill.

D. H. Lawrence. "Rings um mich her, die grosse, ungebrochene Weite." DU (May 1987), p. 6, ill.

Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 63, 65–67, ill.

Anita Pollitzer. A Woman on Paper: Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, p. 206, ill.

Doris Bry in Georgia O'Keeffe, in the West. Ed. Doris Bry and Nicholas Callaway. New York, 1989, pl. 5.

Sarah Whitaker Peters. Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years. New York, 1991, pp. 196, 348.

Charles Child Eldredge. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991, pp. 105–6, ill.

Maria Costantino. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1994, pp. 116–17, ill.

Jula Dech. Georgia O'Keeffe: Gemälde. Munich, 1995, pl. 24.

Robert Hughes. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America. New York, 1997, pp. 12–13, fig. 7.

Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Conn., 1999, vol. 1, pp. 422–23, no. 704, ill.

Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2001, pp. 110–11, fig. 72.

John Carlin and Jonathan Fineberg. Imagining America: Icons of 20th-Century American Art. New Haven and London, 2005, p. 46, ill.

Katja Fauth. Modernist Visions in Taos: Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Artists of the Stieglitz Circle. Marburg, Germany, 2009, pp. 158, 181, fig. 23.

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, 193, 201, 280, no. 187, 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. 540–41.

Lauren Kroiz in Katherine M. Bourguignon Lauren Kroiz and Leo G. Mazow. America's Cool Modernism: O'Keeffe to Hopper. Exh. cat., Ashmolean Museum. Oxford, England, 2018, p. 65, no. 56, ill. p. 151 (color).

The artist (1930–61; on extended loan to MMA, 1949–61; her gift as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to MMA) (Source: The Met, 2025)

Credits & Rights

© Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)

Administrative Information

Version History

Core fields last updated 8/26/2026

Source System ID

8750

Other IDs

704, Catalogue Raisonné