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Long-lost Georgia O’Keeffe painting found in East Village closet
By
Hannah Frishberg
Published Nov 11, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2026
By
Hannah Frishberg
Published Nov 11, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. ET
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“Oh, by the way, there's a Georgia O'Keeffe in the closet,” a woman casually called to her niece, who was over at her East Village home, helping her get her affairs in order shortly before she passed away.
The niece knew her aunt collected art but was still shocked when, in a wooden box buried behind coats in the apartment’s front closet, she subsequently discovered the 10-inch by 24-inch landscape painting “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I,” O’Keeffe’s signature “OK” clearly visible on the original backboard.
The team at Christie’s auction house was also shocked when they got the niece’s email about it.
“We have a very large inbox that gets a lot of stuff sent to it, as you can imagine, and the vast majority of those things are…not that compelling,” Tylee Abbott, senior specialist and international director of American Art at Christie's, said in a phone interview. “From time to time we get something pretty good. This was obviously exceptional. As soon as it came in we all kind of immediately jumped to our feet and ran together and huddled around a computer screen and looked at it, and then started pulling books off the shelves and finding it in published literature to confirm that it was the real deal, and then quickly gave them a call and said we'd be right over.”
The existence of “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” was previously known solely through a 1931 photograph. When the aunt – an “incredibly accomplished” world-ranked bridge-master, Foreign Service member, multilinguist and “extremely private” individual whose family has requested anonymity – earned her master’s degree in 1963, her mother bought the work from the Downtown Gallery on 51st Street, O’Keeffe’s Manhattan dealer, as a graduation gift.
For years, “Near Abiquiu” hung in the woman’s East Village apartment until, during a bridge game in the mid-1980s, she noticed a guest “eyeing it a bit too closely” and decided to pack it up in its original box and hide it in the closet, where it sat until the niece unearthed it.
The box the O'Keeffe painting was stored in.
CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2026
The woman’s mother paid $3,800 for the piece in 1963. Christie’s, which is including the long-lost work in its 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on Nov. 17, estimates the piece is today worth in the region of $3 million.
It is likely the first in a series of three works depicting New Mexico’s Lobo Peak, the second of which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the third of which was formerly in the collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller.
O’Keeffe painted the series in 1930, a year after her first trip to New Mexico, the American Southwest freshly seeping into her mind’s eye.
“This is the Lobo Mountain…I want to paint this mountain,” she wrote at the time in a letter to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, “but it is quite impossible.”
A 1935 Stieglitz photo of Radio City in the morning light is also part of the sale, which is on view to the public through Nov. 17 at Christie’s New York. The Stieglitz, however, is an iconic print of well-documented provenance far less delightfully unexpected than the depths of one woman’s East Village coat closet.
“You know, we can get a little bit jaded, seeing art so often coming across our desks,” said Abbott of the charming surprise the O’Keeffe’s inclusion has brought to this month’s sale. “It's really kind of re-inspiring to know that there are still treasures hidden away.”
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Hannah Frishberg
Hannah Frishberg covers New York City arts and culture. Got a tip? Email Hannah at [email protected].
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