Description:
landscape; large white tree in center of tan landscape with yellow-green foliage behind it and a yellow-green bush directly in front of its base
Label Text:
O'Keeffe painted Grey Tree, Fall in a difficult period following the death of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, in 1946. Upon returning to their New Mexico ranch in the fall of 1948, she set to work on this painting, which may be the one she later described in a letter as: "a dead tree surrounded by the autumn...very gentle and pleasant and high in key."
This painting is one of many of O'Keeffe's works that took the cottonwood tree as the subject. Here, the tree is a burgeoning gray presence at the center of the canvas. The artist often found herself overwhelmed in her response to such pure color, and late in life confessed fighting the urge to, in her own words, "eat a fine pile of paint just squeezed out of the tube."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1987.13 |
