Sarah Mann Home - Georgia's Art Teacher

Head north on Town Hall Drive. Observe the rolling fields much as Georgia would have on her roughly hour-long horse and wagon trips to town for her early art lessons with Sarah Mann. At the junction of Highway 19 / East Main Street, turn left toward downtown Sun Prairie. This section of Highway 19 was designated the Georgia O’Keeffe Memorial Highway in 2005. Entering downtown Sun Prairie, note the Wisconsin Historical Society marker next to the city municipal building that describes Georgia’s early years.

Continuing west, the Sun Prairie Downtown Historic District has preserved many of the buildings as they were during Georgia’s time. Note the “Old City Hall” building at the corner of East Main and North Bristol Street. Constructed in 1895, when Georgia was 8 years old, this building was a celebrated achievement for the growing community and anchored the downtown district that Georgia passed on her way to lessons. Turn right onto North Street. The residence at 173 North Street was Sarah Mann’s home, the site of early art training for Georgia and two of her sisters.

In 1898, Ida O'Keeffe (Georgia’s mother) arranged for Georgia along with her sisters Ida and Anita to take private art lessons with a local watercolor artist, Sarah Mann. Sarah was born Sarah Haner in 1856, just north of Sun Prairie in the town of Bristol. Recognizing her talent in art, Sarah’s parents arranged for her to attend the Art Institute of Chicago and she developed her techniques using the art institute’s approach of copying other well-received artists.^[1] In 1881 Sarah married William Mann, who had operated Sun Prairie’s American House Hotel. The couple farmed in South Dakota but returned to Sun Prairie in 1889 where William co-owned the Chase, Gross & Mann lumber business.^[2] Sarah became a well-known civic leader of the community and an early advocate of women’s rights. She befriended and sponsored Ida O'Keeffe in joining the 20th Century Club. In addition to Georgia’s independent-minded mother, Sarah Mann was another strong, influential woman in Georgia’s early life.^[3]

Similar to her training at the Art Institute of Chicago (later also attended by Georgia), Sarah had the O’Keeffe sisters learn their art technique by copying pictures they had chosen and painting them in watercolors. Georgia vividly remembered a lighthouse she had copied from one of her geography books at home. Her memories allude to spending her childhood in the Midwest and reveal a drive for artistic fulfillment in the effort: “I had never seen a real lighthouse. I drew it on a long point of land extending into the sea. I had never seen the sea. My paper seemed empty, so I drew a horizontal line and put in some palm trees. I had never seen palm trees. Then the sky seemed empty so I drew in a sun. I painted the sun yellow, the sky and water blue and left the lighthouse white. I could not make my sun as bright and shining as I knew it was. It seemed dull against the fine sky. The more yellow and pink I put on the sun, the less bright it looked. This disturbed me so I began all over and made another lighthouse painting, but this time with a cloudy sky, and in contrast the sun seemed a little brighter. As I remember it now, it finally became a moon. This painting I kept. It has followed me all through life. I still have it.”^[4]

The art training from Sarah Mann also benefited her sisters Ida and Anita. Of her sisters' abilities Georgia would later comment: “My two sisters were sent into town to study painting with me. My sister next to me [Ida] always thought she was the talented one. She thought so until she died, a few years ago. My other sister [Anita], though, was the one I thought had the real talent. She was my pupil at the University of Virginia, and I always tried to get her to let go. But she was always rather timid about her painting. She had no fear about contact with people. It was just the painting.”^[5]

Georgia’s sisters Ida and Catherine would ultimately have their works shown in galleries, but this became a source of tension as Georgia felt they were leveraging her fame and painting style.^[6] Ida specifically tried to curate her own artistic styles and showed under her middle name as Ida Ten Eyck. She was well known, however, to be Georgia’s sister. Anita did not paint professionally. She married Robert R. Young, a railroad tycoon who led the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the New York Central Railroad during and after World War II.

^[1] Reily, Nancy Hopkins. Georgia O'Keeffe, a Private Friendship, Part I - Walking the Sun Prairie Land. Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, NM, 2007, p. 63.

^[2] SPHLM Obituary Collection, https://cityofsunprairie.com/1736/Obituary-Collection accessed 5/29/2024, Sun Prairie Historical Library and Museum.

^[3] Reily, p. 63.

^[4] Pollitzer, Anita. A Woman on Paper: Georgia O’Keeffe. Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, NY, 1988, p. 64.

^[5] Reily, p. 63.

^[6] Robinson, Roxana. “The Rivalry Between Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Sister Ida,” The New Yorker, September 4, 2019.