The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are currently hosting the exhibition “Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George” at the de Young Museum. The show, which was organized by the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York in association with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the first exhibition to explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George.
Between 1918 and 1934, O’Keeffe would spend months at her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s family estate slightly north of Lake George Village in New York’s Adirondack Park. During this highly productive period, O’Keeffe created over 200 paintings depicting the bucolic, wooded setting, which differ greatly from her well-known renderings of the sparse Southwestern landscape.
“Modern Nature” features 53 works from public and private collections and includes botanical compositions of flowers and vegetables as well as still lifes and paintings of the trees that grew on the 36-acre estate. The exhibition also includes paintings of weathered barns and other structures as well as panoramic landscapes. Works have been loaned from a number of celebrated public institutions including the Seattle Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center.
Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said, “It is especially gratifying to host this pioneering and scholarly exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George‒period works, as the artist’s ‘Petunias’ (1925), featured in the exhibition, is a highlight of our renowned collection of modernist works by artists associated with the Stieglitz circle.”
The de Young Museum is the only west coast venue for the exhibition. “Modern Nature” will remain on view through May 11, 2014.