O’Keeffe’s best years

Her best years, Georgia O’Keeffe often remarked, were the early years of discovery and anonymity. She hadn’t yet become “our best woman painter,” or Alfred Stieglitz’s wife, or the sage of Abiquiu. She was an earnest young woman pursuing Art and making her living as an art teacher in towns far away from New York City, where the blankness of life would leave her enormous space to work. No one was watching, and she felt free.

But someone was watching.