Georgia O'Keeffe's 1930 painting Ranchos Church, No. II depicts a church.
The work shows the adobe church at Ranchos de Taos in New Mexico, a building that became one of O'Keeffe's most recognizable subjects. Its massive walls, sculptural form, and weathered surface appealed to her interest in architecture and the visual character of the Southwest. She painted and drew the church repeatedly during the late 1920s and early 1930s.
O'Keeffe's treatment is not a conventional architectural record. She cropped and simplified the structure, emphasizing the rounded exterior form and the strong geometry of adobe construction. The church itself is San Francisco de Asís Mission Church, built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Ranchos Church, No. II is sometimes mixed up with O'Keeffe's paintings of Ghost Ranch, bones, or flowers. Those subjects are important to her career, but this particular work centers on a New Mexican church.