Aside from its grey and white palette that suggests a winter sky, New York Night has little association with the observable world. Yet, it has been seen as inspired by her paintings of New York City made between 1925 and 1929. O’Keeffe’s move with her husband, the photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, to the thirty-three story Shelton Hotel, precipitated her first such paintings. She claimed her paintings were never non-objective, and this painting may reflect a view looking out of the skyscraper. It strongly evokes Stieglitz’s photographs of the heavens made from the early 1920s on, which he called “Equivalents.” New York Night was purchased from Alfred Stieglitz, along with Poppy.