Profile · Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe
Modernist painter; born and raised on a Town of Sun Prairie farm until about age 15
$65 million
Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was a Sun Prairie farm child before she became the painter of New Mexico deserts and flowers. She was born on a Town of Sun Prairie dairy farm on November 15, 1887, at what is now 2407 County Road T at Town Hall Drive, and left Wisconsin in her mid-teens. Second of seven children, she was named for a Hungarian grandfather who arrived in 1848 and later went home. The frame birthplace house burned in 1976. Town Hall School sat across the road. By age ten she had decided to be an artist; once a week she and sisters Ida and Anita took a wagon into town for watercolor lessons from Sarah Mann on North Street. Sacred Heart Academy in Madison boarded her for one high-school year, 1901–02. In the fall of 1902 the family left for Williamsburg, Virginia; she stayed with Aunt Lola Totto, finished a sophomore year at Madison High, and followed them south in June 1903. That is the Wisconsin stretch: a farm, a one-room school, Mann’s studio. Sun Prairie later named a park for her, then renamed it for two local coaches; a marker now sits at the municipal building, and Highway 19 carries her name. The farm is a private house. She died in Santa Fe on March 6, 1986.