In her life...

c1901

O’Keeffe, her face in the sun on the bottom right, poses with her siblings, mother, and aunt.

The O’Keeffe’s own one of the more prosperous farms in the area around Sun Prarie, Wisconsin. Georgia’s father designed the idiosyncratic house himself.

1908

O’Keeffe takes classes at the Art Students League in New York City, studying with the famed American artist William Merritt Chase.

Georgia, near the center of the photo with her bow tie askew, joins a party at the Art Students League with girls dressed as boys and boys dressed as girls.

1917

O’Keeffe discovers the American West, hired as head of the art program at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, Texas, a cattle town in the Texas Panhandle.

As the oldest daughter, Georgia takes in Claudia, the youngest daughter, following the death of their mother in Virginia.

Georgia poses for a photo by her sister Claudia on the roof outside the dormer window of their room in Canyon, Texas. A skilled seamstress, Georgia sewed pockets into her dress in an era when ladies’ dresses did not have pockets.

1918

Georgia moves to New York City in June. Alfred Stieglitz, America’s foremost art gallerist, offers her an apartment and financial support so that she can paint full-time. He immediately begins taking photographs of her, including several of her posed in front of her art.

As early as that first summer in New York, Stieglitz also takes nude photos of O’Keeffe. That fall they consummate their relationship and become lovers. Alfred is 24 years older than Georgia and married.

1920s

O’Keeffe and Stieglitz split their year between the city and the Stieglitz family compound on Lake George in upstate New York. In 1924 they are married.

Georgia, with help from Alfred Stieglitz’s niece, Elizabeth Davidson, re-shingles the roof of an old shanty at the Stieglitz compound at Lake George.

The shanty becomes Georgia’s studio, her place of refuge from the crowd and commotion of the large and boisterous Stieglitz family.

1929

Mabel Dodge Luhan’s home in Taos, New Mexico, is the hub of a vibrant arts scene.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, writer and socialite, poses with her husband, Tony Luhan, a man from the Taos Pueblo near the town of Taos, New Mexico.

At Mabel’s invitation, Georgia and Beck Strand spend the summer in Taos. It gives O’Keeffe independence from Stieglitz, who is having an affair with a younger woman. And the landscape invigorates Georgia’s art with new inspiration.

1946

At the age of 82, Alfred Stieglitz dies. For the next three years, Georgia paints hardly anything, overwhelmed with the task of settling his estate, including the assignment of over 850 works of art.

For the next 40 years, O’Keeffe’s life will be centered in northern New Mexico, splitting her time between two homes - one in the small town of Abiquiu and the other, pictured here, about 15 miles away, set in the spectacular landscape of an area called Ghost Ranch.

1970

After several years of the mid-century art world more focused on abstract expressionism and pop art, O’Keeffe receives a lifetime retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art.

Millions of young American women, many of them filled with the spirit of second-wave feminism, discover in Georgia O’Keeffe an iconic role model of independence and empowerment.