“Readers will welcome what Lisle has found. The woman who emerges has extraordinary personal stature, artistic gifts, commitment to her vision.” —( Chicago Tribune ) Recollections of more than one hundred of O’Keeffe’s friends, relatives, colleagues, and neighbors—including 16 pages of photographs—as well as published and previously unpublished historical records and letters provide “an excellent portrait of a nearly legendary figure” ( San Francisco Chronicle ). Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most original painters America has ever produced, left behind a remarkable legacy when she died at the age of ninety-eight. Her vivid visual vocabulary—sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth—had a stunning, profound, and lasting influence on American art in this century. O’Keeffe’s personal mystique is as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvases. Portrait of an Artist is an in-depth account of her exceptional life—from her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher, to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde, Alfred Stieglitz, to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert where she lived until her death. Renowned for her fierce independence, iron determination, and unique artistic vision, Georgia O’Keeffe is a twentieth-century legend. Her dazzling career spans virtually the entire history of modern art in America. Armed with passion, steadfastness, and three years poring over research, former Newsweek reporter Laurie Lisle finally shines a light on one of the most significant and innovative twentieth century artists. “ Portrait of an Artist is in many ways a remarkably informative book. Lisle has created a vivid and sensitive portrait of O'Keeffe as an artist and woman...Above and beyond the personal portrait, Lisle's biography is a marvelous evocation of the American places that have been important in the development of O'Keeffe's character and her art.” —James R. Mellow, The Saturday Review “Laurie Lisle has given us a mortal Georgia O'Keeffe, whose human hunger and frailties, gifts and strengths, enabled her to survive—triumphantly—a conflicted life. Many readers will draw encouragement and even inspiration from this portrait.” —Eleanor Munro, author, Originals: American Women Artists “Readers will welcome what Lisle has found. The woman who emerges has extraordinary personal stature, artistic gifts, commitment to her vision.” — Chicago Tribune “ Portrait of an Artist is a superb piece of work in every respect...Not only does it document the full scope to date of this remarkable 20th-century life, but it does so directly, simply, and objectively. Clearly journalist Lisle has scooped the art world with an impressive literary debut.” — Smithsonian “ Portrait of an Artist is a sensitive and beautifully documented biography. It moved me deeply--I can't remember when a book involved me so totally.” —Patricia Bosworth, author, Diane Arbus: A Biography “What a personality emerges from these pages!... Portrait of an Artist is filled with riches.”—Joyce Carol Oates, Mademoiselle      Laurie Lisle's most recent book is a memoir,   Word for Word: A Writer's Life, in which she describes writing this initial biography of Georgia O'Keeffe during the artist's lifetime.      She has also written a biography of artist Louise Nevelson and books about women without children, gardening, and educating girls.      Her work has been described as "an act of courage" and "elegantly written yet also edgily realistic."      For more information about the author go to laurielisle.com Chapter One: Sun Prairie Late in the autumn of 1887, the Sun Prairie Countryman, a rural Wisconsin newspaper, briefly noted that a baby girl had arrived two days before on Tuesday, November 15, in the farmhouse of Ida and Francis O'Keeffe. The birth, assisted by a country doctor in the O'Keeffe home, was the second for the young couple. The twenty-three-year-old Ida named her infant Georgia Totto for her patrician Hungarian grandfather, George Totto. Georgia, it appeared, would have Ida's dark hair, and her round face was pure Irish, like her father's. The variegated pigment of her eyes suggested the mingled bloodlines of brown-eyed maternal forebears and blue-eyed paternal ones. Georgia was born into a rapidly industrializing world. The country's longest suspension bridge, linking Brooklyn to Manhattan, had recently opened, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris was still under construction, due to be completed in two years. The American government in Washington, under the reformist leadership of President Grover Cleveland, was attempting to exert some control over capitalist monopolies and to bring order to the grim, oppressive factories where immigrant laborers often erupted into violence and strikes. But in the western part of the country, the last great Indian war was still to be fought against federal troops. Little of this turmoil affected the pa