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Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Access O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Cross with Red Sky, 1929
Image: okeeffe_CR669_cross-with-red-sky_824010.jpg
Georgia O'Keeffe
Cross with Red Sky, 1929
Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 inches
CR No. 669
Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 inches
Collection:Private Collection
CR No. 669

A black cross stretches across the length of the canvas. Visible behind the cross is a landscape with a dark red sky and dark blue mountains below. Just in front of the mountains are rolling brown and green hills.

CR No. 669

Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

Cross with Red Sky

Source of title: backing inscription.

Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)

Black Cross with Red Sky

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

Selected Exhibition Titles

Black Cross with Red Sky
Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, 1999, The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.)

General Remarks

Whitney Archive indicates, "Painted 1929." "I think it a good picture of this world here. The sky is a bright dark red—mountains a bright dark blue. . It is a black cross in front of the Taos Mountain" (O'Keeffe to Edith Halpert, 13 August 1958, Archive of American Art). "I sent the cross to that Dallas religious show and it returned with a hole in it and a bad stretcher mark from bad packing so I sent it to Keck as it needed to be sprayed" (O'Keeffe to Edith Halpert, 13 August 1958, Archive of American Art). O'Keeffe wrote: "One evening when I was living in Taos we walked back of the morada toward a cross in the hills.... If I turned a little to the left, away from the cross, I saw the Taos mountain — a beautiful shape. I painted the cross against the mountain although I never saw it that way. I painted it with a red sky and I painted it with a blue sky and stars" [see cat. no. 668] (Georgia O'Keeffe [1976], unpaginated, text accompanying entry 64). Pictured in 1930 New York (An American Place) Stieglitz installation photograph, see Appendix III, figure 33. See cat. nos. 1846–48. (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Inscriptions

Stretcher: inaccessible. Verso: inaccessible. Backing: "Cross with Red Sky / 1929 / Oil on canvas / 40 x 32" (Label: printed, O'Keeffe (red-bordered), black ink) (Source: Lynes, 1999)

Technique

Oil Painting

Materials

Oil on canvas

Credits & Rights

© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Administrative Information

Version History

Core fields last updated 8/26/2026

Source System ID

9164

Other IDs

669, Catalogue Raisonné