What was Georgia O'Keeffe's most expensive painting sold at auction as of 2014?

Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 was sold for $44.4 million in 2014, making it the most expensive artwork by a woman sold at auction at that time. The 1932 painting presents a large white jimson weed flower against a dark background.

The work belongs to O'Keeffe's celebrated flower paintings, in which she enlarged individual blossoms so that petals and curves fill nearly the entire composition. She said she painted flowers large partly because people often did not take time to look at them. The scale encourages viewers to study details that might otherwise be overlooked.

Sotheby's auctioned the painting in New York in November 2014. The price greatly exceeded its presale estimate and drew renewed attention to O'Keeffe's importance in American modernism and to the historical underrepresentation of women artists in the market.

The auction record is time-specific: later sales by other women artists surpassed it. That does not change the 2014 result or the painting's importance in O'Keeffe's career.