Sky & Telescope - January 2023 - 38

Celestial Sleuthing
ing 265-foot-high steeple " (Manhattan Churches, 2016, p.
78). Architectural drawings note a slightly greater height
(275 feet, or 84 meters) for the tower. The lofty spire of this
church and its location on the north side of the street combine
to make it a perfect match for the church in New York
Street with Moon.
We also found a vintage postcard that captures almost the
same scene that O'Keeffe painted. The postcard shows the view
looking west along 48th Street, with the Bishop's Crook lamppost
on the northwest corner of the intersection of 48th Street
and Vanderbilt Avenue, Hotel Chatham next to the lamppost,
other buildings on the north side of 48th Street, and the spire
of Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas in the distance.
In the description given in her 1976 book published more
than 50 years later, O'Keeffe correctly recalled the Hotel
Chatham and the lamppost, but she mistakenly identified the
location as 47th Street. Later authors simply repeated the error.
Unfortunately, both Hotel Chatham and the specific lamppost
depicted in the painting no longer stand. Interested readers
can still head to the south side of 48th Street and 49th
Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, to find other
Bishop's Crook examples (or use Google Street View).
Having established the " where " of New York Street with
Moon, we directed our attention to the question of " when? "
Returning to the astronomical content of the painting, we
noted the Moon's location high in the sky above Manhattan.
O'Keefe's Evening Star
In addition to paintings like New York
Street with Moon, Georgia O'Keeffe created
many abstract works that included
the night sky. While teaching art at West
Texas State Normal College, in Canyon,
Texas, she produced at least eight
watercolors, each known as Evening
Star. Inspired by sunset walks west of the
town, O'Keeffe apparently started work
on the series by mid-March of 1917. The
first example featured a normal evening
twilight scene with a white dot in the sky
at the upper left, while subsequent versions
made the transition to abstraction.
Calvin Tomkins, writing for the New
Yorker magazine, interviewed the artist
and noted, " Although much of the
new work looked wholly abstract, it was
always based on something she had seen
in the landscape. " ( " Profiles: Georgia
O'Keeffe, " New Yorker, March 4, 1974,
p. 42).
What was it that O'Keeffe saw in the
evening twilight sky? Important clues are
present in her writing:
38 JANUARY 2023 * SKY & TELESCOPE
We often walked away from the town
in the late afternoon sunset . . . The
evening star would be high in the
sunset sky when it was still broad
daylight. That evening star fascinated
me. It was in some way very exciting
to me . . . I had nothing but to walk
into nowhere and the wide sunset
space with the star.
(O'Keeffe, 1976: text accompanying
catalogue 6)
She explained her transition to abstraction:
.
. . I began painting the evening star.
And my first painting was just the
horizon and the sky and a little star.
Well, that didn't give you any idea
of the painting; it had to be more
exciting than that.
(Ann Prentice Wagner, " Living on
Paper, " PhD dissertation, University
of Maryland, 2005, p. 293)
Art historian Amy Von Lintel observed
that some of O'Keeffe's letters from
March 1917 appear to describe the origin
of the Evening Star series. As O'Keeffe
wrote to Alfred Stieglitz:
Tuesday night [March 13, 1917] . . .
worked awhile till supper - and after
that walked into the sunset till it was
gone . . . about three miles I guess
. . . then back in the dark.
(letter postmarked on Wednesday,
March 14, 1917; quoted by Amy Von
Lintel, Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime
Texas Letters, 2020, p. 83)
In a letter from the next day, O'Keeffe
dramatically emphasized her artistic
breakthrough:
Wednesday night [March 14, 1917]:
I've worked - today - even painting
in my spare time - it's big and it
looks like Hell let loose with a fried
egg in the middle of it - and I'm
A Clouded Moon Runs High
When the Sun or Moon " runs high, " it rises in the northeast,
passes high overhead, and remains above the horizon for
many hours before finally setting in the northwest. The Sun
or Moon " runs low " when it rises in the southeast, skims at a
relatively low altitude across the sky not far above the southern
horizon, and remains in view for a relatively short time
before setting in the southwest.
Skywatchers recognize seasonal variations in the behavior
of the Sun and the full Moon, which lie opposite each other
in the sky. As a result, around the summer solstice the Sun
" runs high " overhead, providing many hours of abundant
sunshine, while summer full Moons " run low. " Near the
winter solstice, however, the situation is reversed and the
Sun " runs low " over the southern horizon, providing fewer
hours of weak sunlight, while winter full Moons " run high. "
Because New York Street with Moon shows a full or nearly full
Moon high above the foreground buildings, we can infer that
the painting represents a full Moon period on a date not far
from the winter solstice.
The painting also includes a meteorological clue. Both the
pattern of the clouds and their opaque quality, obscuring the
lower part of the lunar disk, suggest that O'Keeffe depicted
lines of altocumulus clouds. Fortunately, records from the New
York Meteorological Observatory in Central Park recorded
both the types of clouds and the fraction of the sky covered.
Sky & Telescope - January 2023

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