Some rediscoveries happen in archives, others in attics. This one happened in a hall closet in Manhattan’s East Village. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I (1930), a painting the art world only knew from an old photograph, will be offered at Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on 17 November 2026. Christie’s gives the estimate as “in the region of $3 million”; the online lot page lists $3–5 million. Until the sale, the canvas is on free public view at 20 Rockefeller Center (7–17 November).
A graduation gift, a bridge game and a wooden box
According to Christie’s, the painting was bought on 15 April 1963 at the Downtown Gallery, O’Keeffe’s dealer in Manhattan, for $3,800. The buyer’s daughter received it as a gift when she earned her master’s degree. She hung it in her East Village apartment until the mid-1980s – and then, the family says, a guest at a bridge game seemed to be “eyeing it a bit too closely”. The fiercely private owner put the work back into its original wooden box from the gallery and stored it in her front closet.
There it stayed, behind dozens of coats, unknown even to her relatives. Only this year, while her niece was helping to sort her belongings, did the aunt casually mention that she owned an O’Keeffe. The niece found the crate, with the artist’s “OK” signature on the original backing board, and emailed photographs to Christie’s. The owner died shortly afterwards.
From “unlocated” to authenticated
The small horizontal canvas – just 10 by 24 inches (25.4 × 61 cm) – appears in an appendix of O’Keeffe’s catalogue raisonné as unlocated. Until now it was known only from a 1931 photograph; Christie’s lists its one exhibition as Georgia O’Keeffe: Recent Paintings at An American Place, Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, in 1931. Tylee Abbott, head of American Art at Christie’s New York, told CBS that the house combined visual analysis with the catalogue record and the original 1963 bill of sale from the Downtown Gallery to confirm the attribution.
O’Keeffe first travelled to New Mexico in 1929, and the landscape soon became central to her art. Christie’s believes this work is the first of three versions showing Lobo Peak, north of Taos Pueblo. The second is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The third, from 1931, sold at Christie’s in 2018 in the sale of the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection for $8.41 million, against an estimate of $3–5 million.
A marquee week in New York
The painting, which carries a third-party guarantee, is one of the highlights of a busy New York marquee week. Christie’s is also selling works from the collections of Clive Davis, Herbert Lust and Antonio Homem Sonnabend. Reports say part of the proceeds will go to an educational institution. For collectors, the story is a reminder that well-documented masters can still hide in plain sight. For everyone else, it is a nice reason to take a second look inside the closet.