O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916 with her large paintings of enlarged blossoms and New York buildings, presenting them as if seen through a magnifying lens. Her early work was mostly abstract, but she became involved in the Precisionist movement and achieved significant success, and by the 1920s her work was becoming more representational. Beginning in 1929, when she began working part of the year in Northern New Mexico (which she made her permanent home in 1949), she depicted subjects specific to that area.