Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV

1930

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

An abstracted painting of a roughly oval-shaped jack-in-the-pulpit flower fills this vertical composition with cool, saturated blues, grays, and greens. A royal-blue elongated, rounded core at the bottom center is surrounded by a pale gray flame-like shape. Petals flare outward and up around the core to reach toward the sides and top of the canvas. A thin white line extends upward from the top center of the core to meet the pointed tip of the unfurling, innermost midnight-blue petal. Layers of green, reminiscent of leaves, curl outward around the top half of the flower. Pale blue in each of the four corners creates the impression of a background behind the flower, and fades to white at the top 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, this work, Jack-in-the-Pulpit Abstraction – No. 5, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. VI. Jack in the Pulpit No. IV presents a magnified view of the spadix set against the spathe’s cavernous, dark purple interior. The composition is bifurcated by a narrow strip of white that emerges from the tip of the spadix. Green foliage and a hint of cloudy sky are confined to the upper right and left corners.

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.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV (English)
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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Video:  Georgia O'Keeffe "Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV" (ASL)

This video provides an ASL description of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV.

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 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; by exchange 1955 through (Downtown Gallery, New York) to Drs. Melvin [1920-1969] and Helen W. [1921-2009] Boigon, New York, until at least 1971;[1] sold 1972 through (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York) to private collection, Miami; (Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York), in 1973; returned 1973 through Doris Bry, New York, to the artist [1887-1986];[2] her estate; bequest 1987 to NGA.
[1] The artist wrote to Edith Halpert, owner of the Downtown Gallery, on 3 January 1955: "The Boigons write me that they have exchanged the Antelope [Pedernal] for the "Jack In The Pulpit" -- and I don't know which one." Halpert responded on 8 January 1955: "Yes, the Boigons decided to exchange 'Antelope and Pedernal' for the large 'Jack-in-the-Pulpit #6' date 1930." (The letters are in the Downtown Gallery Records, 1824-1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington: Artist Files, A-Z: O'Keeffe, Georgia 1951-1955, Box 25, Reel 5550, Frames 1173-1175 and 1177-1178; copies in NGA curatorial files.) The artist and Doris Bry renumbered the Jack-in-the-Pulpit series in 1970; this painting, now the fourth, was originally the sixth.
[2] The provenance is from Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols., New Haven and London, 1999: 1:435, no. 718.

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, February 1932, no. 105, as Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

1943

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1943, no. 39.

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. 68, repro.

1984

  • Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 58.

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. 80, 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, fig. 21.

2001

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001, no. 177, repro.

2002

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Naturalezas íntimas, Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 2002, no. 20, repro.

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. 120.

2011

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, Fondazione Roma Museo, Palazzo Cipolla, Rome; Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich; Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, 2011-2012, no. 41, repro. (Italian catalogue), no. 113, repro. (German and Finnish catalogues).

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. 53, repro.

2014

  • Loan to display with permanent collection, The Phillips Collection, Washington, 2014-2015, no catalogue.

2015

  • Collection Conversations: The Chrysler and the National Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 2015-2016, no catalogue.

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. 61, fig. 10.

2021

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2021 - 2022, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 261, repro.

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

1995

  • Benke, Britta. Georgia O’Keeffe 1887-1986: Flowers in the Desert. Cologne, 1995: 44, color 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. 11.

1999

  • Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 1:435, no. 718, color repro.

2000

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001: no. 177.

2004

  • Eldredge, Charles C. “Skunk Cabbages, Seasons and Cycles.” In Joseph S. Czestochowski, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe: Vision of the Sublime. Memphis, 2004: 71-72, pl. 42.

2008

  • Miller, Angela et al. American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity. Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008: 409-410, color fig. 12.19.

2009

  • Balken, Debra Bricker. Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence. Exh. cat. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2009: 62-63, fig. 51.

2016

  • National Gallery of Art. Highlights from the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Washington, 2016: 296, repro.

  • 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: 125 fig. 10, 127-128, 150 no. 61.

Inscriptions

across top of old back board, now taped to bottom half of back: No 6 Jack in Pulpit - 30 / signed within five-pointed star: OK

Wikidata ID

Q20192838

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