Georgia Engelhard was the first child of George Engelhard and Agnes Stieglitz. It is as the niece of Alfred Stieglitz, modernism’s most successful early booster in the United States, that Engelhard’s artistic career was encouraged. From the age of 12 to 22 she corresponded regularly with Stieglitz who serve as a confidant to the young woman. Engelhard occasionally posed for Stieglitz and the uncle honored her with an exhibition at his famous gallery, 291, when she was only ten years old. (Stieglitz’s motivation to show his niece’s work was more than likely a response to Wassily Kandinsky’s proposition that there was a fundamental spirituality to be found in true art and that children’s art had the ability to convey this “inner truth.”)
It is under the tutelage of Stieglitz’s wife, Georgia O’ Keeffe, that Engelhard matured as a painter. In biographies Engelhard is repeatedly mentioned as O’ Keeffe’s friend and companion. Georgia minor, as Engelhard was called, served as comic release for the older artist who often found Stieglitz and his family oppressive. The two artists frequently painted together at Stiegltiz’s summer house on Lake George and occasionally took excursions together. Engelhard’s paintings reflect O’ Keeffe’s influence—flat areas of pure color and sensuous curves are used to define the landscape. In both Abstraction and in Lake we see Engelhard’s enthusiasm for color and drama. The mountains are anything but static; undulating curves and constrasting colors provide an energy that is in keeping with the modernists’ enthusiasm for nature. Engelhard’s landscapes are more traditionally comprehensive than O’ Keeffe’s, who tended to focus in on an object or form.
Despite a paralyzing fear of heights, Engelhard became a premier mountain climber at the age of 20 and was the first female climber to ascend many of the peaks in the Canadian Rockies. Engelhard’s determination to overcome this specific fear evolved into a passion for the mountains that lasted throughout her lifetime and is made evident in paintings on the subject. Stieglitz’s biographer, Sue Davidson Lowe, believes that Lake is an impression of Lake Louise with Mt. Victoria in the background, a location where the artist often climbed. Abstraction may be scene recalled from her numerous climbs in the Swiss Alps.
Engelhard was also a writer and an accomplished photographer. In 1938 when she began living with Eaton Cromwell she stopped painting and together the couple pursued photography. While living in Switzerland they sold a number of their pictures to postcard companies. Few of Georgia Engelhard’s paintings are in existence today and when one does appear there is often a dispute about whether the canvas comes from O’ Keefe’s hands or Engelhard’s.
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