NEW YORK – For decades, the painting sat hidden beneath coats and boxes in the closet of a Manhattan apartment.
Almost no one knew the artwork was there until its owner, a woman in her 90s, casually mentioned to her niece one day: “Oh, by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the closet.”
The painting is an early work from the period when O’Keeffe became captivated by the American Southwest. It portrays a quintessential New Mexico landscape, with rolling hills rendered in warm earth tones.
Christie’s has estimated the painting’s value at $3 million to $5 million. It is scheduled to be offered at auction Tuesday.
The auction house says the 1930 painting was probably the first of a series of three. The second is held by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, while the third belonged for many years to the Rockefeller family.
Until now, the location of the first painting had remained largely unknown.
O’Keeffe painting comes from a key period
The work depicts Lobo Peak near Taos, New Mexico. It is “particularly important because of its early date and its representation of the inception point of O’Keeffe’s time in the American Southwest,” said Tylee Abbott, Christie’s director of American Art.
A New York art gallery sold the painting for $3,800 in 1963 to a woman who later gave it to her daughter.
“Before that it was only known through photography that had been taken in 1931,” Abbott said.
O’Keeffe, who died in 1986 at age 98, is widely regarded as the “Mother of American modernism.” A pioneer who developed a distinctive abstract style, she is best known for paintings of flowers and Southwestern landscapes.
She lived in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she built a home and studio surrounded by sweeping desert views that influenced her work as a 20th-century painter. The region in northern New Mexico is also the ancestral homeland of many Native American communities.
Family believes painting was a graduation gift
The daughter of the woman who bought the painting in 1963 kept it in her East Village apartment, according to the auction house. The family has asked Christie’s not to disclose its identity.
They did, however, provide the auction house with details about the artwork, including the story of how it was rediscovered.
The painting’s owner lived into her late 90s and died recently. She never married and was described by her family as deeply private and exceptionally intelligent. During her career, she worked for the U.S. Foreign Service and spent time in Europe.
She collected antiques and abstract art, though nothing else in her collection approached the significance of the O’Keeffe.
The family believes her mother gave her the painting as a graduation present after she completed a master’s degree in the 1960s. She displayed it for years, but in the mid-1980s became concerned after noticing a guest paying unusually close attention to it.
Painting bears O’Keeffe’s signature mark
The woman placed the painting back in its original packing crate and stored it at the rear of a closet, her niece said. The niece spent the last several years caring for her aunt and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to respect the family’s privacy.
Around 2022, the woman first told her niece that the painting was in the front closet. It remained there until this year, when the family began clearing out the apartment and settling her affairs.
Once the artwork was removed from its crate, its authenticity was apparent.
The painting contains all the hallmarks of O’Keeffe’s work, including her distinctive signature mark on the back: a star with her initials, “OK,” written in the center.
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Seewer reported from Ohio.
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