Lake George supplied the subject for many Georgia O'Keeffe paintings from the 1910s and 1920s.
O'Keeffe spent substantial periods at Lake George, the large lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She visited the area with Alfred Stieglitz and his family and drew inspiration from its water, hills, trees, flowers, and changing seasons. The location became one of the recurring settings of her early and middle career.
Her Lake George works range from recognizable still lifes and landscapes to increasingly simplified compositions. She used natural forms from the area as starting points for experiments in shape, color, and abstraction. Paintings of leaves, trees, and autumnal forms helped demonstrate how she could transform familiar subjects into powerful modernist designs.
Lake George is sometimes mistaken for the New Mexico landscapes that dominate accounts of O'Keeffe's later work. The two regions belong to different phases: Lake George was especially important earlier, while New Mexico became her central subject after her first visit in 1929.