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Oil on canvas, 39 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches
CR No. 773
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Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1952
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A bright white cow's skull with large horns occupies the center of the composition. A black stripe runs vertically down the center of the painting, behind the skull. Red stripes run on the right and left edges of the work. Behind the stripes, a blue and white background fills the rest of the canvas.
CR No. 773
Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Cow's Skull, Red, White and Blue
Source of title: Whitney Archive.
Alternate Title (1999 Catalogue Raisonné)
Cow's Skull (Red, White & Blue)
Source of title: Downtown Gallery Archive.
Cow's Skull – Red, White and Blue
Source of title: Downtown Gallery Archive.
Cow's Skull, Red White and Blue
Source of title: Abiquiú Notebooks.
Alternate Title
Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue
Source of title: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
General Remarks
Whitney Archive indicates, "See Gallery photograph. . . . Infor. from Miss Bry (An Amer. Place), July 1949: On permanent loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Georgia O'Keeffe as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Coll." Pictured in 1931–32 New York (An American Place) Stieglitz installation photograph, see Appendix III, figure 51. O'Keeffe wrote: 'I painted a horse's skull –– then another . . . and then another. . . . After that came a cow's skull on blue. . . . As I was working I thought of the city men I had been seeing in the East. They talked so often of writing the Great American Novel –– the Great American Play –– the Great American Poetry. . . . So as I painted along on my cow's skull on blue I thought to myself, 'I'll make it an American painting. They will not think it great with the red stripes down the sides –– Red, White and Blue –– but they will notice it'' (Georgia O'Keeffe [1976], unpaginated, text accompanying entry 58). Reproduced and titled Death and Transformation in New York Sun (January 1932); Life and Transformation in The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (January 1932). These titles were assigned by Stieglitz. (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Inscriptions
Backing: 1. OK {5star} (graphite) 2. "1931" (graphite) 3. "'Cow's Skull (Red, White & Blue)' by . . . ." (AS, AAP2, black ink) 4. AAP9 5. "Box 13 / on 2" (DB, black ink) (Source: Lynes, 1999)
Initialed (on cardboard backing, in center of five-pointed star, in graphite): OK (Source: The Met, 2025)
Technique
Oil Painting
Materials
Oil on canvas
1970–1971
Whitney Museum of American Art (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
Art Institute of Chicago (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) (as Georgia O'Keeffe)
1978–1979
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (as Representations of America)
State Hermitage Museum (as Representations of America)
Palace of Art (as Representations of America)
1943
Edward Alden Jewell. "Art: Georgia O'Keeffe Shows Work." New York Times (December 29, 1931), p. 28.
Henry McBride. "Skeletons on the Plains: Miss O'Keeffe Returns from the West with Grewsome Trophies." New York Sun (January 2, 1932), p. 8, ill., as "Death and Transformation".
Elizabeth McCausland. "Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibits Skulls and Roses of 1931." Springfield Sunday Union and Republican (January 10, 1932), p. 6E, ill., as "Life and Transformation".
Robert Beverly Hale. 100 American Painters of the 20th Century: Works Selected from the Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1950, ill. (color) p. 58 and front cover.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures. Vol. 17, album W, Twentieth-Century American Painters. New York, 1950, unpaginated, no. 8, ill. (color).
"Panorama of American 20th Century Art Exhibited." Santa Barbara News-Press (June 18, 1950), p. C-5.
Francis Henry Taylor. Fifty Centuries of Art. New York, 1954, ill. p. 184 (color).
Harrison E. Salisbury. "Molotov Visits Museum and U.N." New York Times (June 16, 1955), p. 3.
James Thrall Soby in New Art in America: Fifty Painters of the 20th Century. Ed. John I. H. Baur. Greenwich, Conn., 1957, ill. p. 110.
Martin Friedman. "The Precisionist View." Art in America 48, no. 3 ([Fall] 1960), ill. p. 36 (color).
Henry Geldzahler. American Painting in the Twentieth Century. New York, 1965, pp. 132–33, ill.
Doris Reno. "Miami's Old 17th Century Friend Found Shining in a New Setting." Miami Herald (August 22, 1965), p. 21E, ill., calls it "Cow's Skull".
Dorothy Seiberling. "Horizons of a Pioneer: Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico." Life 64 (March 1, 1968), cover ill.
George M. Cohen. A History of American Art. New York, 1971, p. 177.
Charles Child Eldredge. "Georgia O'Keeffe: The Development of an American Modern." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971, pp. xv, 258, fig. 45.
Nora B. Beeson. Guide to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1972, p. 279, no. 8.
Marshall B. Davidson. The American Heritage History of the Artists' America. New York, 1973, pp. 330–31, ill. (color).
Georgia O'Keeffe. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1976, text facing pl. 58, ill.
A. Hyatt Mayor. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Favorite Paintings. New York, 1979, pp. 100–101, ill. (color).
Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 508–9, fig. 922.
Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall. "Modernist Painting in New Mexico 1913–1933." PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 1981, p. 259, fig. 68.
Patricia Janis Broder. The American West: The Modern Vision. Boston, 1984, pp. 158–59, 168, ill.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 42 (Fall 1984), pp. 46–47, 49, 60, fig. 46.
Jan Garden Castro. The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1985, pp. 90, 92.
Sasha M. Newman. Georgia O'Keeffe. Washington, D. C., 1985, p. 29, pl. 14.
Edward Lucie-Smith. Art of the 1930s: The Age of Anxiety. New York, 1985, p. 243, fig. 148.
Michael Desmond in 20th Century Masters from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Exh. cat., Australian National Gallery. Canberra, 1986, p. 57, ill. (color).
Edith Evans Asbury. "Georgia O'Keeffe Dead at 98: Shaper of Modern Art in U.S." New York Times (March 7, 1986), p. A17, ill.
Erika Billeter. "Georgia O'Keeffe's Bilder." Du (May 1987), p. 59, ill.
Matt Damsker. "The Met Goes Modern: New Wing a Treasure Box, Even If Collection Has Gaps." Hartford Courant (February 11, 1987), p. C7.
Helen Kohen. "Metropolitan Goes Modern With New Wing." Miami Herald (February 1, 1987), p. 8K, ill.
William Wilson. "A Mod Fan Dance at The Met." Los Angeles Times (February 8, 1987), p. 5.
Amei Wallach. "It's Modern's Time at the Metropolitan." Newsday (January 4, 1987), p. II/5, ill.
Sylvia Hochfield. "Thoroughly Modern Met." Art News 86 (February 1987), p. 115.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 72, 76, fig. 54 (color).
Michael Berry. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 70–71, ill.
Anita Pollitzer. A Woman on Paper: Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1988, pp. 211–12, ill.
Roxana Robinson. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life. New York, 1989, pp. 366–67.
Doris Bry and Nicholas Callaway, ed. Georgia O'Keeffe in the West. New York, 1989, pl. 27.
Donald Goddard. American Painting. New York, 1990, ill. p. 195 (color).
Sarah Whitaker Peters. Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years. New York, 1991, p. 357 n. 107.
Charles Child Eldredge. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1991, pp. 118–21, ill.
Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury, ed. From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon. Reading, Mass., 1992, pp. 63–64, fig. 5.
Elizabeth Montgomery. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1993, pp. 112–13, ill.
Mike Venezia. Georgia O'Keeffe. Chicago, 1993, cover ill.
Maria Costantino. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 1994, pp. 35, 118.
Barbara Burn, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. 2nd rev. ed. (1st ed., 1983). New York, 1994, p. 441, no. 19, ill. (color).
Jula Dech. Georgia O'Keeffe: Gemälde. Munich, 1995, fig. 25.
Lois Palken Rudnick. Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture. Albuquerque, 1996, pp. 134–36, ill.
Lisa Mintz Messinger in The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Ed. Peter H. Hassrick. New York, 1997, p. 41.
M. Sue Kendall in Nannette V. Maciejunes and Michael D. Hall. The Paintings of Charles Burchfield: North by Midwest. Exh. cat., Columbus Museum of Art. Columbus, 1997, p. 97.
Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, Conn., 1999, vol. 1, pp. 468–69, no. 773, ill.
Wanda M. Corn. The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–1935. Berkeley, 1999, pp. 245–50, 266, 269, 280, 284, 286–88, 290–91, 302–3, 423, figs. 214 (color), 242 (installation photo, An American Place, Exh. New York 1931–32).
Stella Paul. Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Resource for Educators. New York, 1999, pp. 67–69, ill. and ill. p. 66 (color), calls it "Red, White and Blue".
Sarah Greenough in Sarah Greenough. Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D. C., 2000, p. 460, fig. 126.
Lisa Mintz Messinger. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2001, pp. 82, 126, 128–29, fig. 82.
Barbara Buhler Lynes with Russell Bowman. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection. Exh. cat., Milwaukee Art Museum. New York, 2001, pp. 50, 169.
Jonathan Weinberg. Ambition and Love in Modern Art. New Haven, 2001, pp. 107–9, 114, fig. 5.2.
Erika Doss. Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford, 2002, pp. 89–91, fig. 43 (color).
Vivien Green Fryd. Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. Chicago, 2003, pp. 184–85, fig. 109.
Llorenç Bonet and Sol Kliczkowski, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2003, pp. 88–89, ill.
Danielle Tilkin et al. New York et l'art moderne: Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle (1905–1930). Exh. cat., Musée d'Orsay. Paris, 2004, pp. 236, 238, fig. 74 (Spanish ed., 2004).
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2004, pp. 332–33, ill. between pp. 376–77.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. London, 2005, fig. 36.
Janet Souter. Georgia O'Keeffe. New York, 2005, pp. 117, 120, 122, ill.
John Carlin and Jonathan Fineberg. Imagining America: Icons of 20th-Century American Art. New Haven and London, 2005, pp. 42, 46, 51–52, ill. pp. 48 (overall), 2, 49 (details).
Donna M. Cassidy. Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation. Hanover, N.H., 2005, p. 23, fig. 1.2.
Susan Wright. Georgia O'Keeffe: An Eternal Spirit. (1st ed., 1996). [New York], 2006, pp. 84–85, ill.
Lothar Schirmer, ed. Georgia O'Keeffe/John Loengard: Paintings and Photographs, a Visit to Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch. Munich, 2006, book jacket (detail ill.), fig. 47.
Jonathan Stuhlman and Barbara Buhler Lynes. Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction. Exh. cat., Norton Museum of Art. West Palm Beach, 2007, p. 30, fig. 17.
Edward J. Sullivan. The Language of Objects in the Art of the Americas. New Haven, 2007, p. 292 n. 19.
Katja Fauth. Modernist Visions in Taos: Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Artists of the Stieglitz Circle. Marburg, Germany, 2009, pp. 163, 171–73, 192, fig. 35.
Lisa Mintz Messinger in Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ed. Lisa Mintz Messinger. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, pp. 8, 14, 193, 202–3, 281, no. 189, ill. (color).
Sarah Greenough, ed. My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Vol. 1, 1915–1933. New Haven, Conn., 2011, pp. 596, 603–4, 630.
Katherine Hoffman. Alfred Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light. New Haven, 2011, fig. 184 (color).
Holland Cotter. "High Aims for Art's Sake." New York Times (October 14, 2011), p. C25.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York, 2012, p. 416, ill. (color).
Barbara Buhler Lynes and Carolyn Kastner. Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico. Exh. cat., Montclair Art Museum. Sante Fe, 2012, pp. 34–35.
Lauren Kroiz. Creative Composites: Modernism, Race, and the Stieglitz Circle. Berkeley, 2012, pp. 183–84, 190, 241 n. 141, colorpl. 8.
Roberta Smith. "A Trans-Atlantic View of Modernism." New York Times (January 9, 2015), p. C30.
Judith A. Barter in America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s. Ed. Judith A. Barter. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2016, pp. 18, 186, no. 37, fig. 2 (color).
Annelise K. Madsen in America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s. Ed. Judith A. Barter. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2016, pp. 103–4, 112 n. 49.
Sarah Kelly Oehler in America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s. Ed. Judith A. Barter. Exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, 2016, pp. 65, 67.
Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 525, ill. (color), colorpl. 449.
Tanya Barson in Georgia O'Keeffe. Ed. Tanya Barson. Exh. cat., Tate Modern. London, 2016, pp. 16, 20, 246 nn. 44, 53.
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Cody Hartley in Georgia O'Keeffe. Ed. Tanya Barson. Exh. cat., Tate Modern. London, 2016, p. 152, fig. 135 (color).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York, 2019, p. 416, ill. (color).
Max Hollein. Modern and Contemporary Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2019, p. 7, ill. p. 55 (color).
Douglas Eklund, Marilyn F. Friedman, and Randall R. Griffey in Making The Met, 1870–2020. Ed. Andrea Bayer with Laura D. Corey. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2020, pp. 166, 253, fig. 182 (color).
Didier Ottinger in Marta Ruiz del Árbol. Georgia O'Keeffe. Exh. cat., Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid, 2021, p. 68, fig. 46 (color).
Allison Rudnick. Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2023, pp. 20, 196, colorpl. 51.
Tamar Boyadjian. "On Labor and Race in Great Depression America." hyperallergic.com. September 27, 2023, ill. (color).
Karen Wilkin. "Yesterday's Tomorrow." New Criterion 42 (December 2023), p. 32.
Lauren Kroiz. Thomas Hart Benton: Where Does the West Begin? Exh. cat., Schoelkopf Gallery. New York, 2024, p. 18, fig. 18 (color).
The artist (1931–52; on extended loan to MMA, 1949–52; her gift as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to MMA) (Source: The Met, 2025)
© Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)
Version History
Core fields last updated 3/30/2026
Last verified by current collection
Source System ID
8788
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Georgia O'Keeffe. Cow's Skull, Red, White and Blue, 1931. Access O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, https://access-ok.okeeffemuseum.org/object/8788.