The painting was buried behind coats and boxes in the closet of a Manhattan apartment for decades.
Few, if anyone, knew about the hidden treasure until the woman in her 90s who lived there nonchalantly told her niece one day, "Oh by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the closet.”
The painting – an early example from a time when O’Keeffe became enamored with the American Southwest – depicts a classic New Mexico landscape with rolling hills in earth tones.
Christie’s estimates its value at $3 million to $5 million. It is set to go up for auction on Tuesday.
The auction house says the painting from 1930 was likely the first in a series of three. The second is in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The other, for many years, was in the collection of the Rockefeller family.
Up until now, the whereabouts of the first one had largely been a mystery.
The painting of Lobo Peak near Taos, New Mexico, is "particularly important because of its early date and its representation of the inception point of O’Keeffe’s time in the American Southwest,” said Tylee Abbott, director of American Art at Christie’s.
In 1963, a New York art gallery sold the painting for $3,800 to a woman who gave it to her daughter.
"Before that it was only known through photography that had been taken in 1931,” Abbott said.
O’Keeffe, who died in 1986 at age 98, is often called the "Mother of American modernism.” She was a pioneer with her own style of abstract art, best known for paintings of flowers and Southwestern landscapes.
She lived in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she built a home and studio on land with breathtaking desert vistas that inspired the work of the 20th-century painter. Many Native American communities trace their ancestry to the area in northern New Mexico.
The daughter of the woman who purchased the painting in 1963 kept it at her apartment in New York’s East Village, the auction house said. The family has asked the auction house not to release their identities.
But they did share with Christie's some details, including how the artwork was found.
The woman who owned the painting lived into her late 90s before dying recently. Never married, she was extremely private and incredibly smart, the family said. At one point in her life, she worked with the U.S. Foreign Service, spending time in Europe.
She collected antiques and abstract art but nothing close to the stature of the O'Keeffe.
The family believes she received the painting as a graduation gift from her mother after earning a master's degree in the 1960s. For many years, she displayed it until the mid-'80s when she noticed a guest looking at it a little too closely.
She boxed it back into the original packing crate and put it in the back of a closet, said her niece, who spent the last few years caring for her and spoke to The Associated Press (AP) on condition of anonymity to honor the family's request for privacy.
Around 2022, the woman first mentioned to her niece that the painting was in the front closet. It stayed there until this year, when they were cleaning out the apartment and getting her affairs in order.
Once unboxed, it was obvious the painting was authentic.
It has all the hallmarks of O’Keeffe’s work – including her signature marking on the back, a star with her initials "OK” scrawled in the middle.
