While Cleaning Out Her Aunt's Manhattan Apartment, a Woman Found a Long-Lost Georgia O'Keeffe Painting Buried Beneath Fur Coats in the Closet

Painted in 1930, “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” sat in the closet for 40 years, with only a single photograph, by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz, attesting to its existence. It could fetch upwards of $3 million at auction later this month November 9, 2026 2:55 p.m. Georgia O'Keeffe, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, 1930 Courtesy of Christie's New York Most people’s closets are littered with life’s spare change—broken umbrellas, unpaired socks and discarded scraps of elementary school artwork. But while cleaning out her elderly aunt’s New York City apartment, one woman made a staggering discovery in the closet. Underneath a pile of fur coats sat a Georgia O’Keeffe landscape painting that had been tucked away for four decades. When she made the discovery, Betsy, who asked to be referred to by only her middle name, was shocked. “I thought, ‘Wow. That’s pretty wild,’” she tells the New York Post’s Natalie O’Neill. The 1930 painting, Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I, is thought to be the first in a series of three paintings depicting Lobo Peak in northern New Mexico. (The second is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the third is in a private collection.) It will hit the auction block as part of Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17. Estimates place the piece’s value between $3 million and $5 million. “To uncover a seminal work, representative of this 20th century master’s deep personal engagement with the landscape, a pillar of her career, which is exquisitely rendered and well preserved, is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and absolutely thrilling,” Tylee Abbott, head of American Art at Christie’s New York, says in a statement. The box that the painting was stored in Courtesy of Christie's New York The artwork features warm earth tones and soft, rippling hills, an early iteration of the abstracted New Mexico landscapes she would paint throughout her career. “O’Keeffe goes to New Mexico in 1929, and this picture is from 1930, so it’s the ground floor of her inspiration at that time,” Abbott tells CBS News’ Noelle Lilley. “And she is very vocal about, in her writings and things, about how impactful it was on her. I think you get that in this picture.” Betsy’s aunt, a career Foreign Service worker and world-ranked bridge master, acquired Near Abiquiu in 1963. It was a graduation gift from her parents, purchased directly from O’Keeffe’s New York dealer for $3,800, roughly $42,000 today. She displayed the modernist piece in her New York apartment for decades. But one day in the mid-1980s, in the middle of a bridge game, she noticed a guest eyeing the painting a little too closely. Out of an abundance of caution, she hid the piece in her entry closet, carefully enclosing the 10-by-24-inch painting in its original box and tucking it behind rows of fur coats. Did you know? A controversial characterization Many critics “projected sexual meanings onto the alluring, inward-curving petals” of O’Keeffe’s enlarged flower paintings, Smithsonian magazine’s Jennie Rothenberg Gritz writes. O’Keeffe disputed those characterizations: “When you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—and I don’t.” “I think she was fully aware of its value,” Betsy explains to the Post. “She recognized that it was an expression of her financial position … She disliked drawing attention to herself.” That meant keeping Near Abiquiu away from all curious eyes, even family members. Betsy had no knowledge of the treasure hidden in her aunt’s closet until 2022, when the pair were preparing the apartment for the arrival home health aides. “That’s when she mentioned, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a Georgia O’Keeffe in the hall closet,” she tells the Post. But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when Betsy returned to help her since-deceased aunt prepare for hospice, that she finally laid eyes on the artwork itself. A 1931 photo of the painting Courtesy of Christie's New York Until its rediscovery, the painting as known to the art world from a sole 1931 photograph, taken by O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Christie’s was able to identify the work using the photograph and O’Keeffe’s distinctive, looping signature in a star-shaped design on the back. “We certainly use just a visual analysis of looking at the painting, looking at the styles, how the brush strokes may match, how other O’Keeffes appear that we’ve known that we’ve sold,” Abbott tells CBS News. “But also, O’Keeffe is very well-documented with a [catalogue raisonné] that published all [her] known works ... This work, of course, appears in the addendum of that as ... ‘unlocated.’” After decades languishing as “unlocated,” concealed among piles of fur, the painting is now on public view at Christie’s New York through November 17, ahead of its auction. You Might Also Like Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. More about: Art Art History Auctions Discoveries Modern Art New Mexico New York City