Which New Mexico church inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings titled Ranchos de Taos Church?

The San Francisco de Asís Mission Church inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings titled Ranchos de Taos Church.

The historic adobe church stands in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, and is formally known as the San Francisco de Asís Mission Church. O'Keeffe visited the building and painted it repeatedly, focusing especially on its exterior masses, rounded buttresses, and sculptural adobe surfaces.

Her works based on the church are not straightforward architectural records. She cropped and reorganized the structure, emphasizing texture, light, shadow, and geometric form. This approach helped transform a familiar religious building into a monumental modernist subject.

The church was built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and remains an active place of worship. It is often called the “Ranchos de Taos Church,” which can cause confusion with other New Mexico churches associated with O'Keeffe. San Miguel Chapel and the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi are also historic Santa Fe-area buildings, but neither is the subject named in Ranchos de Taos Church.