Object number1967.31.1

East River, No. 3

Date1926

Artist Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887-1986)

CultureAmerican

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 11 13/16 x 32 5/16 in. (30 x 82 cm)
Inner Frame: 13 x 32 15/16 x 1 3/16 in. (33 x 83.6 x 3 cm)
Overall: 15 13/16 x 35 3/4 x 3 1/8 in. (40.2 x 90.8 x 7.9 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Mrs. Arthur Schwab (Edna Bryner, class of 1907)

On View

Not on view

Period20th c

Classification(s)

Painting

Terms

Inscribednone noted

Catalogue raisonnéBuhler Lynes, 533ProvenanceThe Intimate Gallery, New York;
purchased by Edna Bryner Schwab, 1927

Vassar Exhibitions

Twentieth-Century American Women Artists from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College

Modern Metropolis

Exhibition HistoryForty New Paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, The Intimate Gallery, New York, NY, January 11 - February 27, 1927;

The Stiglitz Circle: Bluemner, Dove, Hartley, Marin, Maurer, O'Keeffe, Weber, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, December 2 - December 20, 1972;

Four MacDowell Medalists: Hopper, O'Keeffe, Calder and Nevelson, The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, June 30 - July 29, 1973; Thorne Art Gallery, Keene, NH, August 3 - September 9, 1973;

Why Paint America: Artists Probe a Nation's Identity, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, January 22 - March 7, 1980;

Paintings and Drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, September 9 - October 19, 1980;

Geometric Art at Vassar, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, November 1, 1982 - February 6, 1983;

Nevelson and O'Keeffe: Independents of the Twentieth Century, Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn, NY, January 30 - April 10, 1983;

Long Island Landscapes: The Twentieth Century, Heckscher Museums, Huntington, NY, June 30 - August 26, 1990;

Extended Loan to The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, December 1990 - December 1993;

NYNY: City of Ambition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, July 3 - October 27, 1996;

Der kuhle Blick-Reaismus der zwanziger Jahre, Kunsthalle der Hypo Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany, June 1, 2001-September 2, 2001;

Modern Metropolis, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, April 5 - June 16, 2002;

Twentieth Century American Women Artists, Park Avenue Bank, New York, NY, September 18 - November 2, 2007;

Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern, London, England, July 6 - October 30, 2016

Label TextGeorgia O’Keeffe painted a series of over a dozen views of the East River from the rooms she shared with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, on the thirteenth, and subsequently other floors, of the Shelton Hotel from 1925 until 1936. They depart greatly from her more familiar images of flowers and trees and, instead, present the geometry of an urban environment in various moods. They are also more representational than the works of the preceding decade, largely in response to the extreme Freudian interpretation to which her work had been subjected. The painting was first exhibited at Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery located in room 303 of the Anderson Gallery building in 1927 as part of an exhibition of forty recent paintings by the artist. This gallery was the successor to his defunct 291 Gallery and a precursor to An American Place. It was there that Edna Bryner Schwab likely purchased the work. Mrs. Schwab was a devoted client of Stieglitz’s and it was her role as executrix of the Paul Rosenfeld estate, and her own bequest, that brought to Vassar its superb collection of the American Modernists launched by Stieglitz’s efforts.

DescriptionDepiction of the East River, as viewed from Manhattan, looking towards Brooklyn. The scene is composed of simplified tiered buildings in the foreground and with smoke stacks and billowing smoke from the buildings across the distance. The work is rendered in monochromatic, yet contrasting shades of grey.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu