Background

Ethnicity: Ida O'Keeffe's father was of an Irish descent and her mother had Dutch and Hungarian roots.

Ida O'Keeffe was born on October 23, 1889, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, United States, into a family of Francis O'Keeffe and Ida O'Keeffe, both farmers. Ida was the third of seven children in her family. She had four sisters - Georgia O'Keeffe, a renowned painter, Catherine Blanche O'Keeffe, an artist, Anita Ten Eyck Young O'Keeffe and Claudia Ruth O'Keeffe, and two brothers - Alexis Wyckoff O'Keeffe and Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe Jr.

Two of Ida's grandmothers, Isabella Totto and Catherine O’Keeffe, were artists.

Education

When Ida was thirteen years old, her family moved to Williamsburg. Together with her sisters Anita and Georgia, Ida studied art under the guidance of a local watercolor artist, named Sara Mann. Later, following Georgia's footsteps, Ida also attended Chatham Episcopal Institute in Chatham (present-day Chatham Hall). At the institute, Ida participated in the glee club and tennis and basketball teams, while also pursuing art classes.

In 1907, Ida's family experienced financial hardship as Frances O'Keefe's business failed and Ida's mother developed tuberculosis. Unable to afford school, Ida returned to Williamsburg in 1908 to help care for her mother and younger siblings. The next year, in 1909, the family moved to Charlottesville, where Ida took summer art courses at the University of Virginia and finished high school.

In 1918, Ida moved to New York City to study nursing at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. In 1921, she received her degree and served as a gynecological nurse at the same hospital. Some time later, in 1932, Ida also received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, where she studied under a modernist painter and printmaker Charles James Martin, whose style of architectonic abstraction had a significant impact on her.

Career

In 1925, a bit later after obtaining a nursing degree, Ida worked as a private nurse for a family in Norfolk, Connecticut. She never painted before and she took this opportunity to experiment with oil paint. Her earliest works depicted still lifes and plants from the Norfolk landscape. In the early years of her career, Ida also spent several years, working as a drawing teacher in elementary schools across southwestern Virginia.

After spending the summer of 1931, studying under Charles James Martin in Cape Cod, Ida began her Highland lighthouse paintings. With this series, Ida began a decades-long singular study of geometric form.

In 1933, Ida exhibited with her sister Catherine and their grandmothers at New York's Opportunity Gallery. At the exhibition, Ida presented 35 works, including painting and a diverse selection of works on paper. Her subject matter ranged from lighthouses and toadstools to Native American cultural objects. In 1937, the Delphic Studios in New York gave O'Keeffe a one-person exhibition. That same year, Ida participated in group exhibitions at the National Association of Woman Painters, winning an award for her work.

Ida spent the 1930's and early 1940's, living nomadically and working as an art teacher wherever opportunities arose and exhibiting her works at venues across the country. Her employment took her to rural North Carolina, Alabama, upstate New York, Springfield, Missouri and San Antonio, Texas, among other places. After this itinerant period, O'Keefe arrived, in 1943, to the quiet Los Angeles suburb of Whittier. She became an active community member, involved with local women's groups and the Whittier art gallery, where she exhibited her work and volunteered her time. For the remainder of her life, she would focus on the exhibiting in California.

In the 1950's, the artist's health began to decline and her artistic output slowed.

It's worth mentioning, that later, in 1974, Ida's work was featured in an exhibition in Santa Fe. In 2018, a solo exhibition of Ida's works, entitled "Ida O'Keeffe: Escaping Georgia's Shadow", was held at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Achievements

• Ida O'Keeffe was an artist, whose work was neglected due to the fame of her older sister, the famous Georgia O’Keeffe. Throughout her lifetime, Ida was recognized as an artist, yet, whether it was because of the immense popularity of her sister or because of the then circumstance in the art circles, she remained an outsider. During her artistic career, she created about 70 works.
  
  Ida was known for her oil paintings, watercolors and monotypes. However, her most famous works are those, that feature lighthouses. One of her best-known works is "Star Gazing in Texas". It was created during 1938, Ida's year of teaching in San Antonio, Texas, and it represents a magical, almost ritualistic composition, centered around the figure of a woman, bathed in moonlight. This specific work emphasizes the best how Ida saw her own personal and professional position of an outsider.
  
  Many of the artist's works are kept in private collections.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • The Royal Oak of Tennessee

  • Creation

  • Variation on a Lighthouse Theme VI

  • Star Gazing in Texas

  • Variation on a Lighthouse Theme IV

  • Variation on a Lighthouse Theme II

  • Peach-Blown Vase

  • Tulips

  • Toadstool

  • Ozark Lime Kiln

  • Variation on a Lighthouse Theme VII

Views

Quotations: "Well I’d be famous, too, if I had a Stieglitz."

Connections

Ida never married. However, she often found the husband of her older sister Georgia flirting with her. Georgia was not threatened by her husband's flirtations with her sister and more often, than not, when the three spent time together, it was harmoniously.

Father:

Francis O'Keeffe

Mother:

Ida O'Keeffe

Sister:

Georgia O'Keeffe

Sister:

Catherine Blanche O'Keeffe

Sister:

Anita Ten Eyck Young O'Keeffe

Sister:

Claudia Ruth O'Keeffe

Brother:

Alexis Wyckoff O'Keeffe

Brother:

Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe Jr.

grandmother:

Isabella Totto

grandmother:

Catherine O’Keeffe

mentor:

Charles James Martin

mentor:

Sara Mann

References

• Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow This is the first publication, devoted to Ida Ten Eyck O’Keeffe (1889–1961), the younger sister of Georgia O’Keeffe. It presents a thoughtful consideration of Ida’s personal history and her creative work.
  2018