Collection
/
American Art

Red Hills with the Pedernal

Georgia O'Keeffe

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

The Pedernal is a flat-topped mountain that commands the Ghost Ranch landscape and is visible for miles in every direction. O’Keeffe was inspired by its unusual topography and regal presence. It became for her what Mount Fuji was for Hokusai or Mont Sainte-Victoire for Paul Cézanne—a compelling natural feature to be explored again and again in different compositions. Late in life, she liked to tell interviewers that she thought if she painted the Pedernal often enough, God would give it to her.

Caption

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986). Red Hills with the Pedernal, 1936. Pastel on paper mounted to wood-pulp board, 21 1/2 x 27 1/4 in. (54.6 x 69.2 cm) frame: 28 3/8 × 22 1/4 × 2 1/2 in. (72.1 × 56.5 × 6.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, 87.136.4. copyright transferred to Brooklyn Museum, 2006. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Collection

American Art

Title

Red Hills with the Pedernal

Date

1936

Medium

Pastel on paper mounted to wood-pulp board

Classification

Drawing

Dimensions

21 1/2 x 27 1/4 in. (54.6 x 69.2 cm) frame: 28 3/8 × 22 1/4 × 2 1/2 in. (72.1 × 56.5 × 6.4 cm)

Signatures

Unsigned

Credit Line

Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe

Accession Number

87.136.4

Rights

copyright transferred to Brooklyn Museum, 2006

The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.

Frequent Art Questions

  • Was this painting typical of O'Keeffe's work?

    This painting is very typical of O'Keeffe's New Mexico paintings. She was so inspired by the landscape and the work she did there always has a sense of place.
    This one, specifically, exemplifies her use of color. She said of New Mexico: "All the earth colors of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands."

  • Did she have a method of working such as doing preliminary drawings then going into the studio to paint the image?

    Yes, she did. O'Keeffe would travel to the sites, sometimes camping there overnight, and made sketches and sometimes took photographs. She would often return to the same places and paint them time and again.

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Artists and makers

Georgia O'Keeffe

14 works in the collection

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