ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

walls of 291. As during the summer in Virginia, she moved back and forth between
media, each medium spurring her work in the others. She used pencil to make sketches
from nature and to work out compositions for finished works. Watercolor dominated her
production of major works, but she still made some finished drawings in charcoal. Once
she had worked out a subject in graphic media, she at times went on to paint it in oils, but
she was evidently still most at home in drawing and watercolor.
One element that appeared, or rather re-appeared, in O’Keeffe’s artistic practice
in Texas was commercial art work. Rather precious, perhaps mockingly art-nouveau-like
ink drawings of women by O’Keeffe appeared in the November 8, 1916, and August 8,
1917, issues of the popular magazine Vanity Fair (Figs. 4.41-42). 139 She also made other
illustrations that appear suited for unidentified publications or advertisements, although
they are not known to have been published. Possibly O’Keeffe made more such
commercial works that have vanished. As a mature artist, she was anxious to hide her
commercial work and did not keep the original drawings for the Vanity Fair illustrations.
Having clawed her way up the artistic ladder to the level of exhibiting fine artist, she
evidently resented or felt ashamed of the financial necessity for making commercial
illustrations. Pollitzer and Dorothy True must have been aware of O’Keeffe’s distaste for
commercial work, for they gently kidded her in a letter containing a copy of the
November 1916 Vanity Fair which reproduced O’Keeffe’s drawing. True asked Pollitzer
to ask O’Keeffe if she “had seen the design out on the plains.” 140
The pillows and parrot
of O’Keeffe’s fantasized debutant (Fig. 4.41) were far from the bare prairie and brilliant
sun of the Texas landscape the artist depicted in her serious art of the period (as Figs.
4.43-46. 4.50-59). 141
284