Red Canna, 1915
Watercolor, 19 3/8 x 13 in. (49.2 x 33 cm)
Gift of George Hopper Fitch, B.A. 1932, and Mrs. Fitch
1979.111
© 2004 The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Red Canna depicts a lone stem in brilliant bloom, silhouetted on a pure white page. The composition's freedom lies in the spontaneity of its creation, wherein O'Keeffe evidently took brush directly to paper, without pausing to create a preliminary sketch or underdrawing. Lyrical and immediate, the watercolor shows no brushmarks to betray the artist's hand. Rather, successive transparent washes of red or green pigment glide over one another to distinguish petal from stamen, and leaf from stem. Like a great deal of O'Keeffe's work, this watercolor is as much about the purity of paint as about the purity of subject.
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