# Georgia O'Keeffe artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/georgia-o-keeffe/
Profile generated: 2026-05-06T19:17:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1887-11-15
- Death date: 1986-03-06
- Nationality: American
- Movements: American Modernism
- Common media: oil painting, charcoal drawing, watercolor

## About Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) was an American painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and remained largely independent of major art movements. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and educated at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, she is widely recognized as a defining figure of American modernism. In 1915, while teaching in South Carolina, she abandoned academic conventions and produced a series of abstract charcoal drawings that came to the attention of photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited her work at his 291 gallery in New York and the two married in 1924. O'Keeffe is best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico desert landscapes. After decades divided between New York and New Mexico, she settled permanently in Abiquiú in 1949, where the desert environment shaped her late work. Her paintings hang in major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

## Common works and media

Oil paintings of enlarged flowers including irises, lilies, poppies, and petunias. Desert and mountain landscapes of New Mexico. New York skyscraper and cityscape scenes. Charcoal abstract drawings. Animal skull and bone studies. Aerial cloud and river paintings from the 1950s and 1960s. Watercolor landscapes. She worked primarily in oil on canvas, charcoal on paper, and pastel on paper.

## Market and appraisal context

O'Keeffe's works appear regularly at major auction houses and represent some of the highest prices achieved by any American woman artist. Large-scale oil paintings of flowers and New Mexico landscapes are the most sought-after. Valuation depends heavily on medium and dimensions (oil on canvas versus charcoal or watercolor), the period and subject, documented provenance linking to the artist's estate or the Alfred Stieglitz gallery, exhibition history, and condition. Authentication is supported by the Georgia O'Keeffe catalogue raisonné. Reproductions and exhibition posters are common and hold minimal value compared to authenticated originals.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine identity research from museum records, library authority files, and biographical sources with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. This page draws on sources from the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, Getty ULAN, VIAF, the RKD, and Wikidata.

## Sources

- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79148946
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/4360
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500018666
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/32021794/
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/60382
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q46408
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O'Keeffe