Red Hills with Flowers

Description

Fascinated by contrasts in scale, Georgia O’Keeffe frequently juxtaposed enlarged still-life elements with distant landscapes, as seen in Red Hills with Flowers, an image of vibrant blossoms magnified against the dry, steep hills surrounding her home in New Mexico. She admired the striking colors of the land, later equating them with artist paints: “All the earth colors of the painter’s palette are out there in the many miles of badlands. The light Naples yellow through the ochers—orange and red and purple earth—even the soft earth greens.”

Provenance

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), New York and NM, then Abiquiú, NM, from 1949; by exchange to Hortense Henry Prosser (1912–1992; born Hortense Henry; also Mrs. John Prosser), Lake Forest, IL, 1963 [Lynes 1999, vol. 1, 578, cat. 926; vol. 2, 825, cat. 1314]; through the Hortense Prosser Trust, Lake Forest, IL, 1992; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1992.

Red Hills with Flowers

Georgia O'Keeffe

1937

Accession Number

118577

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

50.8 × 63.5 cm (20 × 25 in.)

Classification

painting

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Bequest of Hortense Henry Prosser