Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. VI

1930

Georgia O'Keeffe

Painter, American, 1887 - 1986

A white line curves up into a hook within a smoky dark gray and dusky rose-pink field in this abstract, vertical painting. The white hook stretches up from the bottom center of the canvas up and to our right, to span three-quarters the height of the painting. A rounded, oblong shape fills the open space between the apex of the hook and its sharp, pointed tip. The oblong shape lightens from inky black at the top, through gradations of gray, to become ash white at the bottom. The hook is surrounded by a field in the shape of a narrow, upside-down U, which deepens from fog gray near the hook to black along the sides and where it extends off the top edge. The column created by the inverted U field is flanked by vertical bands of burgundy red, which lightens to rose pink along the left and right edges of the canvas.

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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, Jack-in-the-Pulpit Abstraction – No. 5, and this work. The culminating painting in the series, Jack in the Pulpit No. VI is a highly simplified view of the plant’s spadix, which is reduced to an elegant, dark, linear configuration, whose form is echoed by an eerie white light.

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.

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Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. VI, 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

  • Possibly Georgia O'Keeffe, An American Place, New York, 1934, as Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. 7.

1943

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1943, no. 41.

1946

  • Georgia O'Keeffe: Retrospective Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946, 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. 70, repro.

1984

  • Reflections of Nature: Flowers in American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 60.

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, not in cat. (shown only in Los Angeles).

1997

  • Birth of the Cool. American Painting - from Georgia O'Keeffe to Christopher Wool, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Kunsthaus Zürich, 1997, unnumbered catalogue.

1998

  • O'Keeffe and Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, 1998, no. 20, 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. 22.

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, no. 45, repro.

2009

  • Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 2009, pl. 57.

  • 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. 122.

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. 55, 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. 63, fig. 12.

Bibliography

1976

  • O’Keeffe, Georgia. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York, 1976: color pl. 42.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 252, repro.

1995

  • Benke, Britta. Georgia O’Keeffe 1887-1986: Flowers in the Desert. Cologne, 1995: 45, 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. 13.

1999

  • Lynes, Barbara Buhler. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1999: 1:437, no. 720, 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: 127 fig. 12, 127-128, 150 no. 63.9

Inscriptions

across top reverse: Jack in Pulpit-30 / signed within five-pointed star: OK

Wikidata ID

Q20192841

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