East River from the Shelton Hotel by Georgia O'Keeffe in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

East River from the Shelton Hotel
1928


Object Details

Title: East River from the Shelton Hotel

Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe (American, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 1887–1986 Santa Fe, New Mexico)

Date: 1928

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 12 x 32 in. (30.5 x 81.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1986

Accession Number: 1987.377.3


The Shelton Hotel opened in midtown Manhattan in 1924 as the tallest hotel in the world. O’Keeffe, who lived in the Shelton between 1925 and 1936, took advantage of the bird’s-eye view from her apartment on the thirtieth floor to capture this panoramic, aerial view of the East River waterfront, looking across to Long Island City, Queens. Rendered in dull tones and pictured with factory stacks belching filthy smoke into the air, the hazy composition presents an inhospitable, industrial landscape that betrays the painter’s increasing dissatisfaction with modern urban life.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/484832