Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)

On April 27, 1929, Georgia O'Keeffe and Rebecca Salsbury Strand (later James) journeyed west to Mabel Dodge Luhan's home in Taos, New Mexico, for O'Keeffe's first extended stay in the region that would become her new home. Known as Los Gallos, or "The Roosters," due to its brightly-colored porcelain roosters on the roof, over the years Luhan's home served as a meeting ground for an impressive circle of artists and literati, including O'Keeffe, John Marin, Ansel Adams, Mary Austin and D.H. Lawrence.

It was less than a month after arriving that O'Keeffe executed Porcelain Rooster. In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz dated May 20, 1929, O'Keeffe wrote of the present work, "Dearest--/Such a time--such a time--/Yesterday morning I was in the studio all morning--a pastel--very silly--" (as quoted in S. Greenough, My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, 1915-1933, New Haven, Connecticut, 2011, p. 423)

After her initial visit in 1929, O’Keeffe made almost annual trips to New Mexico, painting in relative solitude for up to six months before returning to New York each winter to exhibit her works at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, An American Place. She exhibited Porcelain Rooster in her 1930 exhibition of new works alongside Farmhouse Window and Door (1929, The Museum of Modern Art, New York), New York Night (1928-29, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska) and Ranchos Church, Taos (1929, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.)

The present work is related to an oil painting by the artist entitled The China Cock (1929, Private Collection).

One of the previous owners of the present work, Sam A. Lewisohn, was an important collector of both American as well as Impressionist and Modern Art. Lewisohn’s collection included Vincent Van Gogh’s L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux and Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, both given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1951.