Key Points
- A 1930 Georgia O'Keeffe landscape stored in a Manhattan closet is estimated at about $3 million.
- The owner hid the painting in the mid-1980s after suspecting a house guest was studying it closely.
- Until its rediscovery, the work was known only from a 1931 photograph and the artist's catalogue.
The latest:
A Georgia O’Keeffe landscape that spent roughly four decades inside a wooden box in an East Village closet will be sold in New York on Nov. 17, with Christie’s estimating it at about $3 million. The 1930 work, “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I,” measures 10 by 24 inches and depicts Lobo Peak. Christie’s said the painting is well preserved.
Details:
- The work: The painting is a 1930 landscape measuring 10 by 24 inches and showing Lobo Peak in New Mexico, according to Christie’s. O’Keeffe, one of the best-known American modernists, lived in New Mexico for many years, and the auction house described the landscape as a pillar of her career.
- The sale: Christie’s will auction the work in New York on Nov. 17 with an estimate of about $3 million, and will show it publicly from Nov. 7. The auction house did not name a reserve price or identify the consignor beyond the family.
- The discovery: The owner invited her niece this year to help sort through belongings at her East Village apartment, according to Christie’s. She mentioned in passing that an original O’Keeffe was sitting in the front closet, behind dozens of coats, inside its original wooden box.
- The purchase: The owner received the painting as a gift from her mother, who bought it from a Manhattan art dealer in 1963 for $3,800, Christie’s said. The auction house did not identify the dealer. At the current estimate, the work would sell for several hundred times that price.
- Why it was hidden: The owner displayed the painting at home until the mid-1980s, Christie’s said, when she grew suspicious that a guest at a bridge game she hosted was eyeing it too closely. She then packed it away in the closet, where it stayed until her niece found it this year.
- The owner: The family asked to remain anonymous and told Christie’s the woman had worked in the Foreign Service, spoke four languages fluently and was a world-ranked bridge master. She died shortly after the visit with her niece during which the painting resurfaced.
- The paper trail: Before the rediscovery, the painting was documented only by a 1931 photograph and an entry in O’Keeffe’s own catalogue of works, according to Christie’s. That record is how specialists knew the landscape existed during the decades it sat out of public view.
- Christie’s assessment: Tylee Abbott, senior specialist and international director of American art at Christie’s, called the find a once-in-a-lifetime moment and said the work is exquisitely rendered and well preserved, reflecting the artist’s engagement with the New Mexico landscape.
Background:
O’Keeffe first worked in northern New Mexico around 1929 and later settled there, producing the desert and mountain landscapes that define much of her reputation. Abiquiu, the area named in this painting’s title, became closely associated with her life and work.
Between the lines:
The $3 million estimate rests partly on scarcity of a different kind: a canvas logged in the artist’s catalogue and photographed in 1931, then absent from the market for decades. Christie’s is also selling a story, with the bridge-master owner, the 1963 purchase at $3,800 and the coat-filled closet all part of the pitch to bidders.
What’s next
Public viewing runs Nov. 7 to Nov. 17 in New York, with the sale itself on Nov. 17. The hammer price against the roughly $3 million estimate will show how much buyers value the rediscovery.
