Georgia O'Keeffe’s 1935 painting Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills shows a ram skull.
The skull is suspended against a New Mexico landscape, with a white hollyhock positioned beside it. O'Keeffe collected animal bones during walks and used them as recurring subjects in paintings made after she began visiting New Mexico.
The work combines two very different kinds of imagery: a stark desert remnant and a delicate flower. O'Keeffe treated bones as powerful, beautiful forms rather than merely as symbols of death. Their whiteness and sculptural structure appealed to her interest in shape and space.
The title makes the subject unusually specific. It refers to a ram’s head, not simply a generic animal skull, and pairs it with the hills and flowers associated with the New Mexico landscape.