Uncovered Georgia O’Keeffe Letters Confirm Paintings Were Veiled Depictions Of Basset Hounds

SANTA FE, NM—Putting to rest a debate that had stirred in the art world for decades, newly uncovered letters from Georgia O’Keeffe made public this week confirmed long-running speculation that the painter’s iconic flower works were in fact veiled depictions of basset hounds.

“I want to tell you about the paintings—those flowers, Alfred—and all of the hearsay over what they supposedly represent, when the truth could not be more plain: They are basset hound dogs,” O’Keeffe wrote in a 1941 letter to her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, revealing that she had purposely incorporated “a long basset face and deep mouth” into each bloom she rendered and did not try to be subtle about it. “Look straightaway and you can’t miss it—the way the color pools like sleepy eyes, the way the petals fold over themselves like those unbelievable dog ears, those sorrowful curtains, all dragging and layered.”

“There is canine in every brushstroke,” O’Keeffe continued. “That is the intention, not an interpretation. The only reason I don’t state this outright is because, well, that’s the whole trick. That is the power. To place a hound where they expect a flower and watch them make theories about the curves of the petals, loudly proclaiming, ‘Here is the melancholy of the modern prairie,’ and then, in a whisper, ‘Or is it the drooping jowls of a mutt?’ But they’re kennel portraits, Alfred, and they always have been. Hold this secret, dear, just as I hold you.”

Other letters from the same period reportedly contain revelations that O’Keeffe’s landmark paintings of animal skulls were all meant to represent vulvae.

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