Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction - No. 5

1930

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

Tall, sinuous, wine-red, plum-purple, and kelly-green curving forms fill this vertical abstract painting. The forms grow up from the bottom edge and converge into an S-shaped curl near the top of the canvas. A bright white line slices down the background beyond the petal at the top, and tapers to a point about three-quarters of the way down the composition. Two elongated, burgundy-red lobes emerge from black shadow at the lower left. One sliver of green grows up the center, and another flares out to our right. The top edge of the painting is lined with celery green at the middle deepening to grass green at the upper corners.

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In her youth, Georgia O’Keeffe had been particularly fascinated by the jack-in-the-pulpit. In 1930, she executed a series of six paintings of the common North American herbaceous flowering plant at Lake George in New York. The National Gallery of Art is home to five of these six works: Jack-in-the-Pulpit – No. 2, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 3, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, this work, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. VI. Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction - No. 5 is the largest painting in the series. Individual plant forms have reached such a degree of abstraction that they are difficult to identify. The predominant purple color indicates the interior of the spathe, and the rounded tips of what are presumably three spadices appear on the left. A white stripe similar to that in Jack in the Pulpit No. IV appears just left of center in the composition.

The large, magnified representations of flowers that O’Keeffe embarked upon in the 1920s became her most famous subjects. Although such images had antecedents in the photographs of Paul Strand and Edward Steichen, and were to some extent paralleled in the paintings of Charles Demuth, O’Keeffe rendered them at an unprecedented scale and became more closely associated with flower imagery than her male peers.

On View

West Building Ground Floor, Gallery G6

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction - No. 5, 1930

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1887-1986]; her estate; bequest 1987 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1931

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, An American Place, New York, 1931, one of nos. 7-11.

1932

  • Possibly Exhibition of The American Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1932, no. 105, as Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

1934

  • Georgia O'Keeffe at 'An American Place', 44 Selected Paintings 1915-1927, An American Place, New York, 1934 (checklist lost).

1935

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Paintings (1919-1934), An American Place, New York, 1935, not on checklist.

1943

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1943, no. 40.

1953

  • Possibly An Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; The Mayo Hill Galleries, Delray Beach, Florida, 1953, no. 13, as Jack in the Pulpit.

1970

  • Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1970-1971, no. 69, repro.

1984

  • Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 59.

1987

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: 1887-1986, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1987-1989, no. 81, repro.

1999

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Dallas Museum of Art; Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1999-2000, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 43 (shown only in Washington and Santa Fe).

2001

  • O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection, Milwaukee Art Museum; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, 2001-2002, not in catalogue (shown only in Humlebaek).

2009

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2009-2010, unnumbered catalogue, pl. 121.

2013

  • Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George, The Hyde Collection Art Museum, Glens Falls; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum, 2013-2014, no. 54, repro.

2016

  • O'Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, 2016, no. 62, fig. 11.

2022

  • Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2021 - 2022, unnumbered catalogue, not reproduced (shown only in Basel).

Bibliography

1976

  • O’Keeffe, Georgia. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York, 1976: color pl. 41.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 176, no. 65, color repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 251, repro.

1996

  • Wagner, Anne Middleton. Three Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O’Keeffe. Berkeley, 1996: 70-72, color pl. 12.

1999

  • Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 1:436, no. 719, color repro.

2007

  • Marshall, Richard D. Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction. Exh. cat. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Vancouver Art Gallery. Milan and New York, 2007: no. 45, 120-121, color repro.

2016

  • Roberts, Ellen E. O'Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York. Exh. cat. Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Portland (Maine) Museum of Art. West Palm Beach, 2016: 126 fig. 11, 127-128, 150 no. 62.

Inscriptions

across top reverse: Jack in the Pulpit Abstraction - 1930 / No.5 / signed within five-pointed star: OK

Wikidata ID

Q20192828

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