O’Keeffe flower painting fetches $44.4 million

A 1932 flower painting by Georgia O’Keeffe brought in $44.4 million on Thursday at an auction of American art at Sotheby’s in New York.

The painting was one of a few works sold by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe to benefit its acquisitions fund, according to Sotheby’s.

“Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” was projected to sell for between $10 million and $15 million. The painting’s biggest claim to fame was that it hung in the White House from 2002 to 2008 during the George W. Bush administration.

Sotheby’s said the final $44.4 million price represents an auction record for a female artist. The painting sold for $1 million in 1994, according to reports.

Another O’Keeffe painting, a landscape titled “On the Old Santa Fe Road,” fetched $5.1 million on Thursday.

The Sotheby’s sale included works by Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth. The auction totaled $75.4 million, though several works failed to sell.

A Rockwell painting titled “End of the Working Day (Commuter Rush)” fetched $1.9 million. The piece first appeared on the cover of Literary Digest on Nov. 6, 1920. Another of the artist’s magazine covers, “Fireman,” which appeared on the Saturday Evening Post on May 27, 1944, brought $1.7 million, below the auction house’s high-end estimate.