Georgia O'Keeffe painted a cow skull in Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, completed in 1931.
The oil painting presents a bleached cow skull against a simplified field of red, white, and blue. O'Keeffe encountered animal bones during her time in New Mexico and collected them as visual subjects. Their hard structures and stark forms suited her practice of isolating natural objects.
The title refers directly to the skull and to the colors of the United States flag. The painting is therefore both a Southwestern image and a distinctly American statement, although it does not function as a literal flag illustration.
Viewers sometimes identify the skull as a bison because bison are strongly associated with American imagery. O'Keeffe's painting, however, specifically depicts a cow skull. The work belongs to her New Mexico period, when bones became recurring motifs alongside flowers, hills, and adobe architecture.