Our lady of the Lily: Georgia O'Keeffe

One reason O’Keeffe was categorized as a female artist throughout the 1920s was that her primary subject matter during that period was flowers.

In the period from 1918 to 1932 O'Keeffe produced more than 200 flower paintings, in which common flowering plants such as roses, petunias, poppies, camellias, sunflowers, bleeding hearts and daffodils are accorded the same significance as rare blooms such as black irises and exotic orchids.

Miquel Covarrubias:  Our lady of the Lily: Georgia O'Keeffe

Indeed, he name became so synonymous with flowers, and with the calla lily in particular, that when Mexican artist Miquel Covarrubias caricatured O’Keeffe for a 1929 issue of the New Yorker, she was shown as ‘Our lady of the Lily: Georgia O'Keeffe’. Holding the single stem of a calla lily, she was a wry allusion to the holy Virgin.

O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz, increased the attention, He arranged the sale of six of her calla lily paintings for $25,000 in 1928 – more than any other group of contemporary paintings had sold for up until then.

During this episode, however, O’Keeffe worked on paintings with other subjects as well, including one that was primarily male in more ways than one: skyscrapers.
Our lady of the Lily: Georgia O'Keeffe

Jack-in-the-Pulpit no IV (1930) by Georgia O’Keeffe

In 1930 the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) produced a series of paintings of flowering plants.

Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the few figures in American art during the 1920s and 1930s who painted in her own way, unlike painted in Europe.

One of them was Jack-in-the-Pulpit no IV a sharply focus close up view of petals and leaves in which organic forms become powerful abstract compositions.

O’Keeffe captures the growing plants slow controlled motion while converting the plants into a powerful abstract composition of lines, forms, and colors. The paintings showed only the ‘Jack’ for the flower reflected her objective to enlarge and further simplify the form.

Jack-in-the Pulpit is a member of the Arum family, a small group of primitive flowering plants whose name comes from the Arabic word for ‘fire’.  Anyone who has taste the raw root quickly understand the meaning.

O’Keeffe’s greatly enlarged flower paintings in Jack-in-the-Pulpit IV of 1930, embody both principles of model-making and of time.
Jack-in-the-Pulpit no IV (1930) by Georgia O’Keeffe

Madonna of the Pinks by Raphael

Madonna of the Pinks by Raphael
The painting is about youth Virgin Mary playing with the Christ child and handling him carnations. Both the Virgin and Child seated in a bedchamber with a view of a sunny landscape seen through a window. The child’s attention has been caught by the delicate flowers she holds, the pinks, which are symbolic of love and betrothal. Virgin Mary is dressed in a grey and yellow dress with a blue skirt and a small white veil, and Jesus sits naked on a white pillow on her lap. A window in the top right corner shows some tumbledown building, and behind the Virgin Mary is a curtain in a dull green color.

The Madonna of the Pinks is an early devotional painting by Italian master Raphael. It was painted in oils on fruitwood. Raphael Sanzio was a painter and architect. Raphael painted the picture shortly before leaving Florence for Rome.

The painting was bought from the Duke of Northumberland in 2004 by London's National Gallery in order to keep the painting from being sent to Getty’s collection.

The Madonna of the Pinks was first deemed an original Raphael in Longhena's 1829 book about the artist. The painting was purchased in 1853 by the 4th Duke of Northumberland for Alnwick Castle. In 1991, National Gallery curator Nicholas Penny examined the picture and hailed it as a rediscovered masterpiece in an article published in Burlington Magazine the same year. Now hanging in National Gallery and considered one of the UK's national treasures.
Madonna of the Pinks by Raphael