What type of flower is depicted in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1936 painting Blue Morning Glories?

Georgia O'Keeffe's 1936 painting Blue Morning Glories depicts morning glories.

Blue Morning Glories belongs to O'Keeffe's long series of enlarged flower paintings. The image focuses on blue and violet blossoms, with the petals expanded across the composition so that the viewer encounters their curves and folds at close range. O'Keeffe repeatedly used flowers to explore shape, color, scale, and abstraction rather than treating them as small decorative details.

Flower imagery became a defining part of her public reputation during the 1920s and 1930s. Although critics and viewers often interpreted the blossoms symbolically, O'Keeffe resisted reducing the paintings to a single meaning. She emphasized that enlarging a flower could make people actually look at something they normally passed by.

Morning glories are different from several other flowers associated with her. Jimson weed appears in the famous 1932 painting, while calla lilies and irises also occur in separate O'Keeffe works. The title Blue Morning Glories identifies the plant directly, making it a particularly clear example of her botanical subject matter.