Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills

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Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills
O'Keeffe Georgia Ram's Head.jpg
Artist Georgia O'Keefe
Year1935
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions76.2 cm× 91.4 cm(30 in× 36 in)
Location Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills is a 1935 oil painting on canvas by American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. It is held in the Brooklyn Museum. [1] It depicts the bones of a ram's skull and a white hollyhock blossom floating against a New Mexico landscape.

The painting marked the start of a stylistic turn for O'Keeffe, as it was more non-realist and surreal than her previous works. The use of a ram's skull was probably influenced by the Dust Bowl, during which animal bones were a common subject of photographs in the region. [2]

Critic Lewis Mumford wrote that it was "one of the most brilliant paintings O’Keeffe has done." [3] Art historians Deanna MacDonald and Geoff Smith selected the painting for their book 100 Best Paintings in New York, writing that it "resonates with expressive color, innate sensuality and an affinity to nature." [4]

References

  1. ↑ "Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram's Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico)". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 10 November 2025.
  2. ↑ White, Katie (29 November 2020). "This Legendary Georgia O'Keeffe Skull Painting Has an Uplifting Backstory". Artnet . Retrieved 10 November 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ↑ Mumford, Lewis (18 January 1936). "Autobiographies in Paint". The New Yorker . Retrieved 10 November 2025.
  4. ↑ Macdonald, Deanna; Smith, Geoffrey (1 March 2008). 100 Best Paintings in New York. Interlink Publishing. pp. 16–17. ISBN   9781566566964.
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