Details

Provenance

Estate of the artist, 1986 Private Collection, 1987 Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Beltexan Galleries, Fort Worth, Texas, 1989 Hall Galleries, Dallas, Texas Private Collection, Victoria, Texas, 1997 (acquired from the above)

Exhibited

Kleinberg, Ontario, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, The Informing Spirit: Art of the American Southwest and West Coast, 1925-1945 , January-September 1994, no. 5

Literature

Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné , vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 1999, no. 1236, p. 770, illustrated in color Catalogue Note Georgia O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico with Paul Strand’s wife, Rebecca James, in April of 1929 and she returned every summer thereafter, moving permanently to Ghost Ranch in 1949.  The stark simplicity of the desert landscape appealed strongly to O’Keeffe’s artistic sensibilities and her paintings of the Southwest soon became as well known as her magnified flower paintings, both of which were executed in O’Keeffe’s unique American vernacular. Her home in Ghost Ranch afforded spectacular views of the mountainous New Mexico terrain.  Jan Garden Castro writes, “On the other side of her house is a canyon surrounded by a semicircular cliff face about one hundred feet high, with a chimney-shaped cliff at one end.  Layers of white, yellow, ochre, orange, and red rock indicate Precambrian granites from the Summerville, Morrison, and Dakota periods, dating back to the first geological age, the Paleozoic Era.  The land’s awe-inspiring old age was transformed into agelessness before the original eye of O’Keeffe” ( The Art & Life of Georgia O’Keeffe , p.114).  In Ghost Ranch Cliffs , painted in 1952, O’Keeffe captured the craggy mountains outside her home with the earthen tones native to the landscape.  She outlined the cliffs with subtle tonal variations of reds, yellows and oranges set against a stark white background to heighten the effect.  O'Keeffe wrote, "A flower touches almost everyone's heart.  A red hill doesn't touch everyone's heart as it touches mine and I suppose there is no reason why it should.  The red hill is a piece of the bad lands where even the grass is gone.  Bad lands roll away outside my door--hill after hill--red hills of apparently the same sort of earth you mix with many miles of bad lands.  The light Naples yellow through the ochres--orange and red and purple earth--even the soft earth greens.  You have no associations with those hills--our waste land--I think our most beautiful country" (Lloyd Goodrich, Georgia O'Keeffe , New York, 1970, p. 22).

Catalog summary

Georgia O'Keeffe Ghost Ranch Cliffs oil on canvas 16 by 30 in. (40.6 by 76.2 cm) Painted in 1952. Provenance Estate of the artist, 1986 Private Collection, 1987 Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Beltexan Galleries, Fort Worth, Texas, 1989 Hall Galleries, Dallas, Texas Private Collection, Victoria, Texas, 1997 (acquired from the above) Exhibited Kleinberg, Ontario, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, The Informing Spirit: Art of the American Southwest and West Coast, 1925-1945 , January-September 1994, no. 5 Literature Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné , vol. II, New Haven, Connecticut, 1999, no. 1236, p. 770, illustrated in color Catalogue Note Georgia O’Keeffe first visited New Mexico with Paul Strand’s wife, Rebecca James, in April of 1929 and she returned every summer thereafter, moving permanently to Ghost Ranch in 1949.  The stark simplicity of the desert landscape appealed strongly to O’Keeffe’s artistic sensibilities and her paintings of the Southwest soon became as well known as her magnified flower paintings, both of which were executed in O’Keeffe’s unique American vernacular. Her home in Ghost Ranch afforded spectacular views of the mountainous New Mexico terrain.  Jan Garden Castro writes, “On the other side of her house is a canyon surrounded by a semicircular cliff face about one hundred feet high, with a chimney-shaped cliff at one end.  Layers of white, yellow, ochre, orange, and red rock indicate Precambrian granites from the Summerville, Morrison, and Dakota periods, dating back to the first geological age, the Paleozoic Era.  The land’s awe-inspiring old age was transformed into agelessness before the original eye of O’Keeffe” ( The Art & Life of Georgia O’Keeffe , p.114).  In Ghost Ranch Cliffs , painted in 1952, O’Keeffe captured the craggy mountains outside her home with the earthen tones native to the landscape.  She outlined the cliffs with subtle tonal variations of reds, yellows and oranges set against a stark white background to heighten the effect.  O'Keeffe wrote, "A flower touches almost everyone's heart.  A red hill doesn't touch everyone's heart as it touches mine and I suppose there is no reason why it should.  The red hill is a piece of the bad lands where even the grass is gone.  Bad lands roll away outside my door--hill after hill--red hills of apparently the same sort of earth you mix with many miles of bad lands.  The light Naples yellow through the ochres--orange and red and purple earth--even the soft earth greens.  You have no associations with those hills--our waste land--I think our most beautiful country" (Lloyd Goodrich, Georgia O'Keeffe , New York, 1970, p. 22).