Author
American Modernism
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1
Georgia O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed — a giant white flower filling the whole canvas: a familiar plant enlarged until it becomes a world.
Its value lies in a new scale of seeing: O'Keeffe balances on the edge of abstraction and nature, turning botany into an almost cosmic image.
Highlights
Surprising facts & legends
Short but striking stories around the work — the things that make it come alive.
Interesting facts
The story around the work
Interesting facts & legends
- In 2014 it sold for $44.4 million — then a record for a work by a woman artist.
- O'Keeffe said she enlarged flowers so even a hurried New Yorker would stop and look.
- Jimson weed is a poisonous night plant that blooms for a single night; she loved its scent.
- She is called the 'mother of American modernism'.
- O'Keeffe was annoyed by sexualised readings of her flowers, insisting she simply painted a flower.
Estimated value
What it is worth today
O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed sold for $44.4 million in 2014 — a record for a work by a woman artist; it now hangs at Crystal Bridges and is not for sale.
More details Open the extended reading, official sources, and visual context around the work
Historical context
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 in its era
O'Keeffe painted Jimson Weed in 1932, continuing her famous series of large flowers. Four white blossoms open across the canvas in a spiral on a pale blue ground.
Path to recognition
How the work became widely known
In 2014 it sold for $44.4 million — then a record for a work by a woman artist. O'Keeffe enlarged flowers to make a busy viewer finally stop and look.
Value
Why the work matters today
Its value lies in a new scale of seeing: O'Keeffe balances on the edge of abstraction and nature, turning botany into an almost cosmic image.
Connections and legacy
How to read the work more broadly
O'Keeffe became the 'mother of American modernism'; her giant flowers are an icon of the female gaze in 20th-century art, though she rejected simplistic readings.
Official sources
Where to verify the institutional context
- Official institution page Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Visual context
Related images and nearby entry points
What to look at
Three entry points into the work
Even a very famous artwork opens more fully when the viewer knows where to look for tension, meaning, and compositional focus.
- Take in the scale: an ordinary flower spread across the whole canvas.
- Find the spiral rhythm of the four blossoms.
- Note the edge between precise botany and abstraction.
Continue the exhibition
A few more works nearby by era, energy, or visual logic
This makes it easier to move through art not as a list of names, but as a connected system of images, themes, and historical gestures.
