Long-Lost Georgia O'Keeffe Painting Found Under Fur Coats Heads to Christie's
A Georgia O'Keeffe painting that was known only from a photograph is going up for auction in New York. The work, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, was painted in 1930 and will be offered at Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17. The auction house expects it to fetch US$2 million to US$3 million, a pre-sale estimate, which is its guess at the likely price.
The painting turned up in an East Village apartment closet, according to Artnet News. It had been hidden under a row of fur coats for nearly 40 years. The person who found it is the niece of the owner, who goes by her middle name, Betsy. She came across it while helping her aunt, a former Foreign Service worker, prepare for hospice care. The aunt has since died.
The painting has a documented history, which collectors call its provenance, or chain of ownership. The aunt's mother bought it from the Downtown Gallery in 1963 for $3,800. The aunt later received it as a graduation gift from her mother in the 1960s. She put it in the closet during the 1980s.
Before the closet discovery, the work was known only from a 1931 photograph. Christie's says it is the first of three O'Keeffe paintings of Lobo Peak, a mountain in New Mexico that stands 12,115 feet (about 3,690 metres) tall. The second version, also from 1930, has been owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1963. It came to the museum courtesy of Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer who was O'Keeffe's husband.
The third version, from 1931, sold at Christie's in 2018 as part of the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection. It fetched US$8.41 million, well above its US$3 million to US$5 million estimate. That result is the closest comparison Christie's has for the new work, though the two paintings differ in size and date.
The newly found canvas is small and wide, measuring 10 by 24 inches (25.4 by 61 centimetres). Christie's lists the sale as Live Auction 24266. The final price will be the hammer price, the bid the auctioneer closes on before fees, plus the buyer's premium, the fee the buyer pays the auction house on top.
For the record books, O'Keeffe's top auction result is US$44.4 million. Sotheby's sold Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, painted in 1932, for that amount in 2014.
For the family, the sale ends a long, quiet chapter. A painting that spent decades behind coats in a closet is now heading to a room full of bidders in Manhattan. Whoever wins it will be the next owner in a line that began with a gallery sale in 1963.
