Sky with Flat White Cloud is the second among a series of seven paintings in which Georgia O’Keeffe explored an unfamiliar perspective—the sky and clouds as seen from an airplane in flight. ^[1] The artist described how her unusual and original choice of viewpoint was inspired by an experience she had traveling by air: “One day I was flying back to New Mexico, the sky below was a most beautiful solid white. It looked so secure that I thought I could walk right out on it to the horizon if the door opened. The sky beyond was a light clear blue. It was so wonderful that I couldn’t wait to be home to paint it.” ^[2] The view from the airplane window evoked two recurrent themes in O’Keeffe’s work, serenity and limitless space. While she was working on the cloud series, she said, “I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to simply stand out in space and have nothing!” ^[3] These images evoke her fantasy of stepping into that void.

O’Keeffe’s cloud paintings are reminiscent of her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs of cloud formations from the 1920s, collectively known as Equivalents, that he defined as “direct revelations of a man’s world in the sky—documents of eternal relations—perhaps even a philosophy.” ^[4] O’Keeffe had also experimented with cloudlike forms in an earlier painting, A Celebration (1924, Seattle Art Museum).

In Sky with Flat White Cloud, O’Keeffe represented the sky as three horizontal bands. The largest represents the solid cloudbank, surmounted by a narrow band of yellowish haze (possibly inspired by the airplane’s contrail) that leads to the blue sky above. The composition corresponds to that of the first picture of the series, Sky Above the Flat White Cloud II ^[fig1], but the painting in the National Gallery of Art’s collection is twice as large. ^[5] The large canvas fills the viewer’s field of vision, and the exaggerated horizontal axis emphasizes a sense of infinity.

The next three versions of the theme, Above the Clouds I ^[fig2], Sky Above Clouds II ^[fig3], and Sky Above Clouds III ^[fig4], were all inspired by a different flight in which the artist found the sky dotted with “little oval white clouds, all more or less alike.” ^[6] In these paintings, she represented the clouds as pebble-like forms arranged in a bright blue sky. In the sixth painting in the series, Clouds 5/Yellow Horizon and Clouds ^[fig5], O’Keeffe reverted to the format of the first two pictures but added a diagonal path through the clouds ascending from left to right. In the seventh and final painting in the series, the twenty-four-foot-long Sky Above Clouds IV ^[fig6], O’Keeffe returned to the “little oval white clouds” motif on a monumental scale.

The unlined, medium-weight support remains mounted on an original stretcher manufactured by Arco, Inc., Glendale, New York. The tacking margins are intact, and selvage edges are present at the right and left sides. The artist probably applied the thin white ground after the support was stretched. The paint layers were applied thinly and in opaque layers, with some variation in texture. Despite passages of thicker, raised brushwork, where broader handling is evident, the weave of the canvas remains prominent. Other than minor damage caused by a dent in the lower-right corner and some areas where crackle has developed, the painting is in good condition. The surface is coated with a thin layer of synthetic resin varnish.

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024