Jimson weed appears in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1932 painting that set a record at auction in 2014.
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 shows a large white jimson weed blossom against a dark background. O'Keeffe painted it in 1932, during a period when enlarged flowers were among her most recognizable subjects.
The work sold at Sotheby's in New York on November 20, 2014, for $44.4 million, including fees. That sale made it the most expensive painting by a female artist at auction at the time. The record later changed as other works by women artists achieved higher prices.
The flower is also called datura or devil's trumpet. O'Keeffe's close-up treatment does not simply document botanical scale; it turns a familiar natural subject into an almost abstract composition. The painting is therefore discussed both as a flower image and as an example of her modernist enlargement.