What 1935 Georgia O'Keeffe painting combines a ram's skull with a hollyhock and New Mexico hills?

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills is Georgia O'Keeffe's 1935 painting of a ram's skull, hollyhock, and New Mexico hills.

O'Keeffe made Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills in 1935, combining a bleached animal skull with a white hollyhock and the distant landscape of northern New Mexico. The unusual arrangement brings together several recurring elements of her art: desert bones, flowers, and sharply defined horizons.

O'Keeffe collected animal bones she found in the desert and transported some of them back to her studios. She treated them as striking natural forms rather than merely as symbols of death. The skulls' curves and openings provided shapes that could be isolated against broad skies and mountains.

The title is sometimes shortened informally, which can cause confusion with her other skull paintings. O'Keeffe also painted Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue in 1931, but that work has a different animal subject, color scheme, and date.