?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
PREPARING FOR WORCESTER RETROSPECTIVE: "I ALWAYS LIKE TO HANG MY OWN SHOW" O'KEEFFE, GEORGIA. Two items, each to her travel agent Donald Ferguson: Autograph Letter Signed * Small Photograph Signed. The letter, expressing uncertainty about whether to take a trip [to Asia] with him, explaining that she must do a number of things for her retrospective at Worcester Art Museum, proposing the possibility of taking the trip afterwards in the company of a "woman doctor" guest, remarking that she must first visit her sister and others which will tire and annoy her, noting that she has her passport photographs, and, in a postscript: "My good pen broke after 30 years use and is being fixed--that is why this nub scratches." 6 pages, 4to, onionskin paper, written on rectos of separate sheets; ink received stamp at upper center on recto touching text, staple holes at upper left, horizontal folds. The photograph, bust portrait of her looking into camera [for use in her passport]. Signed vertically in blank left margin. 2 1/2x2 1/2 inches. Abiquiú, 22 July 1960; Np, [1958]
"It isn't the beautiful N.M. summer that keeps me from saying I will go on this trip. It is that I am having a retrospective exhibition in Worcester, Mass--opening night of Oct. 3rd. The director has just been here for two weeks so that now many things are definite that have been a little hazy. "I have much to do here that will take me at least a couple of weeks--framing, packing etc. The help I can get is not very good--a sheep herder is my most helpful man. As I am rather fussy that may sound funny--and it is. ". . . I always like to hang my own show. . . . By the time I spend ten days or two weeks in other people's houses as I must the last two weeks of Sept. I will probably be fit to be tied. ". . . The show is open late the night of Oct. 3rd. If it isn't raining and I can get a plane to N.Y. that night or early the next morning I can fly from N.Y. on Oct. 4th and connect with you. No one but a fool would do it and then fly to Tokeo [sic] the next day. . . . ". . . There is a woman doctor who spends five or six nights a month at my house. She has the baby clynics [sic] up my way. . . . She is a rather special person--her face rather pretty but her back is a bit hunched. . . . I urged her to take the trip. . . . If I go she will go. . . . "I hesitate to go because I will be tired when I start and that does not seem a good idea. Also, when I return from the trip with you I will have to go through the show business again for a show in N.Y. and have to go East again for that. "If I can get my packing of pictures down and live through the visits of two difficult relatives 'till the 7th of August I will write you . . . . "I suppose in the back of my head I intend to go even if it seems a form of mild lunacy when I have so much to do that is difficult. I simply say to myself, I don't know of anything more interesting to do with those six weeks--even if the fall here is wonderful. . . . "I have passport and 2 dozen horrible photographs. . . ."
