The flower in Georgia O’Keeffe’s famous 1932 painting is jimson weed.
The work is titled Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1. O’Keeffe painted the large white flower in 1932, after seeing jimson weeds growing near her home in New Mexico. The painting magnifies a single blossom so that its trumpet-shaped form fills much of the canvas.
In 2014, the painting sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $44.4 million, including fees. That price made it the most expensive work by a female artist sold at auction at the time. It was later surpassed by other artists, so the record is historical rather than permanent.
Jimson weed is also known as Datura or moonflower, although common names can vary by region. The painting is sometimes confused with O’Keeffe’s many iris and poppy paintings, but its subject is specifically a white jimson-weed flower.