GEORGIA O’KEEFFE. American painter.
Autograph Letter Signed, Georgia O’Keeffe, one page, quarto, Abiquiu, July 25, 1969. To Elizabeth Monroe. With the original envelope.
“Dear Elizabeth Monroe / When you are in Santa Fe drop me a note and plan to come up some morning.
“If you do not have a car I could probably send for you.”
The envelope is addressed by O’Keeffe with her name and address (Abiquiu, New Mexico 87510) imprinted on the back flap.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s first glimpse of New Mexico, the future source of her artistic renewal and inspiration, was the summer of 1929. Part of almost every summer was spent there, exploring the rugged mountains and deserts of the region on camping trips, collecting rocks and bones from the desert floor and making them, along with the distinctive architectural and landscape forms of the area, subjects of her work, and gently tending to her creativity which was never greater than in this place she called the “Faraway.”
In the summer of 1934, while recuperating from a nervous breakdown, she visited Ghost Ranch, north of Abiquiu, for the first time and decided immediately to live there. She purchased a house on the ranch property.
A decade later, on the last day of December 1945, Georgia O’Keeffe bought a second house, in Abiquiu, south of Ghost Ranch. It was an abandoned hacienda which was practically in ruins. The buildings were falling down, the roofs had caved in, and the old adobe was sliding into flattening heaps of mud.
It did have much-coveted water rights, a beautiful and enigmatic door in the long wall of its patio, and three acres of land. A complete renovation was necessary. Georgia O’Keeffe entrusted the task to Maria Chabot, a young friend who about the same time inherited a nearby ranch. The project took nearly four years to complete. In 1949, after wrapping up the estate of Alfred Stieglitz in New York, she moved to her newly renovated, now finally habitable, hacienda forever.
Framed (with a cream inner mat and a taupe outer mat, with a photograph, in a beige wood frame) dimensions: 20 3/4 inches wide by 18 1/8 inches high.
Price: $2,750
This item is associated with these categories in our inventory:
- Art
- Women
