Georgia O'Keeffe at 291

1917

Alfred Stieglitz

Associated Names
Alfred Stieglitz

Artist, American, 1864 - 1946

This black-and-white photograph is a close-up portrait of a woman from the chest up. Her body is turned to us, but she looks up to the left. She has light skin, dark eyes, thick eyebrows, a straight nose, a slight dimple in her cheek, and thin lips set in a neutral expression. She is wearing a dark brimmed hat and a dark garment with a white V-neck collar and white buttons down the font. The background is blurred with swirling shapes in white, gray, and black.

Media Options

This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.
Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    platinum print

  • Credit Line

    Alfred Stieglitz Collection

  • Dimensions

    image: 23.3 x 19 cm (9 3/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
    sheet: 25.4 x 20.2 cm (10 x 7 15/16 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1980.70.1

  • Stieglitz Estate Number

    OK 25D

    Part of Stieglitz Key Set Online Edition

    Learn more

  • Key Set Number

    457

The image shows a man leaning his head on his hand, positioned with his face resting on his left hand. He has a mustache, thin-framed eyeglasses, and thick, greying hair that curls slightly at the edges. He is dressed in a formal jacket, a white shirt, and a black bow tie. The background is a soft, dark blur.

Alfred Stieglitz

Curious for more Alfred Stieglitz scholarship?

Discover over 1,000 artworks that the artist’s wife Georgia O’Keeffe termed his “Key Set” of prize photographs. Museum scholars have illuminated each work, his career, practices, and lifetime achievements.

Learn about the Key Set

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Georgia O'Keeffe; gift to NGA, 1980.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2002

  • Alfred Stieglitz: Known and Unknown, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, June 2–September 2, 2002; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 6, 2002–January 5, 2003

2016

  • Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern, London, July 6–October 30, 2016; Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna, December 7, 2016–March 26, 2017; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, April 22–July 30, 2017

Bibliography

2002

  • Greenough, Sarah. Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set: The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Photographs. Washington, 2002: vol. 1, cat. 457.

Inscriptions

by Alfred Stieglitz, on mount, upper left verso, in graphite: OKeeffe 1917 at "291" / June 1—
by Georgia O'Keeffe, on mount, lower left verso, in graphite: OK 25D

Wikidata ID

Q64036850

Scholarly Remarks and Key Set Data

Remarks

Although Georgia O’Keeffe first visited 291 in 1908 to see the Rodin exhibition and subscribed to both Camera Work and 291, Stieglitz did not see any of her work until January 1916 when her friend Anita Pollitzer brought it to the gallery. Impressed that a woman could create such expressive and abstract work, Stieglitz wrote O’Keeffe and the two began an intense and ultimately intimate correspondence. They met in spring 1916 when O’Keeffe returned to New York to study at Columbia University Teachers College. In late May 1917 O’Keeffe traveled from Canyon, Texas, where she was teaching, to New York to see her third exhibition at 291, but arrived after it had closed (14 May). Stieglitz rehung the exhibition for her. She returned to Texas a few days later, explaining in a letter to Pollitzer on 20 June 1917, “I just had to go Anita—There wasn’t any way out of it—and I’m so glad I went” (YCAL).

“A few weeks after I returned to Texas, photographs of me came—two portraits of my face against one of my large watercolors and three photographs of my hands” (Georgia O’Keeffe in Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz [1978], unpaginated).

Based on their correspondence, Stieglitz photographed O’Keeffe on 1 June, the day she left New York to return to Texas. The date of 4 June on Key Set numbers 458, 459, and 460 probably indicates the day he completed the prints.

Behind O’Keeffe is her watercolor Blue I, 1916 (Lynes 119), hung horizontally.

You may be interested in

Loading Results