Archives Exhibition
Shadow on Her Sunshine: Albert Barnes and Georgia O’Keeffe
November 7, 2018 – July 2, 2019
Violette de Mazia in the Merion gallery with Georgia O’Keeffe, 1941. Photograph by Angelo Pinto, Pinto Studios. Photograph Collection, Barnes Foundation Archives
About the Exhibition
Albert C. Barnes first met Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) in 1927, when she visited his art collection at the gallery in Merion. Their meeting resulted in a warm correspondence that lasted until Dr. Barnes’s death in 1951.
For many years, Dr. Barnes had attended O’Keeffe’s exhibitions in New York City, but he was never inclined to own one of her paintings until he met the artist and fell under the spell of her personality. In the spring of 1930, he purchased two of O’Keeffe’s paintings, referred to in his letters as Indian Girl and Still Life.
Dr. Barnes saw the O’Keeffe purchase as an experiment. “[If the] pictures sang in tune with the paintings in the rest of the collection,” he said, “they would have a permanent home.” He moved the paintings from one wall ensemble to another, but after six months, he decided to return them.
He wrote a letter to O’Keeffe to explain his decision, but first sent it to her dealer, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, to gauge its harshness. He did not want to hurt the artist. O’Keeffe received the letter, and there were no hard feelings. She continued to visit Dr. Barnes and his collection through the 1940s.
Scholars have tried to determine exactly which two O’Keeffe paintings were once in the Barnes collection. But with such vague titles and no photographic evidence, the identity of these works remains unknown.