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May 2018
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Fresh Water Boats For Sale
The Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum,
organized a first-of-its-kind exhibition that examines the extraordinary body
of work created by O’Keeffe of and at Lake George.
Between 1918 and 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) lived for part of
each year at Alfred Stieglitz’s (1864-1946) family estate on Lake George,
the popular resort destination in the Adirondacks of New York. The 36-
acre property was situated just north of Lake George Village along the
western shoreline. It served as a rural retreat for the artist, providing the
basic materials for her art and a distinct spirit of place that was essential
to O’Keeffe’s modern approach to the natural world. During this highly
productive decade, O’Keeffe created more than 200 paintings on canvas and
paper in addition to sketches and pastels, making her Lake George years
among the most prolific and transformative of her seven-decade career.
This period also coincided with her first critical success and emergence as
a professional artist; yet, Lake George is often portrayed as an annoyance
from which she tried to escape.
“In later years, O’Keeffe herself and various writers described the Lake
George years as a period of frustration,” according to Dr. Cody Hartley,
director of curatorial affairs at the O’Keeffe Museum. “There is this sense
that she felt constantly harassed by the overbearing Stieglitz family and
found the landscape cloying, as if it was too overgrown to offer creative
inspiration.” The exhibition and accompanying catalogue provides an
important corrective. “In looking closely at her art and correspondence from
the Lake George years, it becomes clear just how richly inspiring she found
the region. Her deep awareness of the natural world, be it a landscape or
a botanical subject, is as much indebted to her time at Lake George as
anywhere.”
In 1923, for example, O’Keeffe enthusiastically wrote to her friend
Sherwood Anderson, “I wish you could see the place here – there is
something so perfect about the mountains and the lake and the trees –
Sometimes I want to tear it all to pieces – it seems so perfect – but it is really
lovely – and when the household is in good running order – and I feel free
to work it is very nice.”
The exhibition explores the full range of O’Keeffe’s work inspired by
Lake George, from magnified botanical compositions of the flowers and
vegetables that she grew in her garden, to a group of remarkable still lifes
of the apples and pears that she picked on the property. O’Keeffe became
fascinated with the variety of trees—cedars, maples, poplars, and birches—
that grew in abundance at Lake George, and they were the subject of at least
25 compositions. Telescopic views of a single leaf or pairs of overlapping
leaves were another recurring motif during O’Keeffe’s Lake George years,
resulting in some 29 canvases. Architectural subjects, including paintings
of the weathered barns and buildings on the Stieglitz property that blend
the descriptive and the abstract, emerged as a theme, as did a number of
panoramic landscape paintings and bold, color-filled abstractions that often
visually related to the subjects she was working on at the time. Landscape
views of the lake and surrounding hills, throughout the seasons and in a
variety of conditions were also a recurring subject. All of these themes will
be explored through a selection of approximately 55 works gathered from
public and private collections.
O’Keeffe painted throughout the summer and fall at Lake George and
transported canvases back to her New York studio for completion and
exhibition in the spring. Based in Glens Falls, New York, just a short distance
from Lake George and the location of the Stieglitz property, the Hyde
Collection brings a rich understanding of the region and its historical context.
As Erin B. Coe, chief curator of the Hyde Collection, observes, “Modern
Nature offers an unprecedented opportunity to intimately connect the works
to the environment that conditions that inspiration.”
Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George was organized by the
Hyde Collection, in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.