Grant Wood

The American painter Grant Wood (1891-1942) was one of the principal Regionalists of the 1930s. He depicted his Iowan subjects in a deliberately primitivizing style, sometimes satirizing them.

Grant Wood was born on Feb. 13, 1891, at Anamosa, Iowa. His father, a farmer, died in 1901, and the family moved to Cedar Rapids. There Grant took drawing lessons from local artists and attended high school. He studied design briefly in Minneapolis at the Handicraft Guild, taught school near Cedar Rapids, and then took a job in 1913 in a silversmith shop in Chicago and attended night classes at the Art Institute. In 1916 he registered at the Art Institute for full-time study as a "fresco painter."

During World War I Wood served in Washington, D.C., where he made clay models of field gun positions and helped camouflage artillery pieces. After teaching art in a Cedar Rapids high school, he left for Europe in 1923. He spent most of the next 14 months in Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian. The paintings he did in Paris were in an impressionistic manner. On his return to America he spent the summer of 1925 painting pictures of workers at a dairy equipment and manufacturing plant in Cedar Rapids. His paintings began to sell, and he was able to give up teaching. To supplement his income he decorated house interiors.

In 1927 Wood received a commission for a stained-glass window memorializing the veterans of World War I to be installed in the Cedar Rapids City Hall. To learn the technique of stained glass he went to Munich. There he admired the work of the 15th-century French and German primitive painters and began to work in a linear, primitivizing style. In the late 1920s he painted portraits of his mother and local Iowans.

Wood's work is usually seen as espousing the homespun virtues of the people of Iowa. The acid overtones in such works as his well-known American Gothic (1930) are generally missed. Wood's maiden sister and the local dentist posed for the picture. Behind the prim, straightlaced couple, who stand self-consciously erect and stiff, is a flimsy Gothic-like structure. Wood had a special distaste for the conservatively patriotic organization, Daughters of the American Revolution, which he satirized in his Daughters of Revolution (1932). Here he posed a group of proud, self-righteous, elderly ladies, obviously insular in their experiences and philosophies, gingerly holding their teacups, before the familiar Emanuel Leutze painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. In Wood's Victorian Survival (1931) he shows a stiffly grim, elderly Iowan woman. Here the insularity is combined with a certain diabolical quality.

After the Works Progress Administration was established, Wood directed the 34 artists working at the University of Iowa and planned and executed a series of frescoes at Iowa State University in Ames and elsewhere. He died in Iowa City on Feb. 12, 1942. He was one of the major Regionalists, a group of painters who in the 1930s employed a variety of naturalistic styles (in marked contrast to the modernistic idioms of the previous two decades) for a subject matter that was obviously American in content.

Further Reading

Darrell Garwood, Artist in Iowa: A Life of Grant Wood (1944), is chronological and anecdotal; the few illustrations of paintings are of poor quality. University of Kansas Museum of Art, Grant Wood, 1891-1942: A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of the Noted Painter from Cedar Rapids (1959), is useful.

Additional Sources

Graham, Nan Wood, My brother, Grant Wood, Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1993. □

Wood, Grant (1892–1942). American painter, one of the leading exponents of Regionalism. He was born on a farm near Anamosa, Iowa, and spent most of his life in his native state, mainly at Cedar Rapids. His training in art was varied but uneven; as a painter he was largely self-taught, although he studied at the Académie Julian, Paris, in 1933, during one of his four visits to Europe (the others were in 1920, 1926, and 1928). Early in his career he was something of an artistic jack-of-all-trades, employed as a metalworker, interior decorator, and teacher, as well as a painter (and in his army service during the First World War he did camouflage work). The turning-point in his life came when he obtained a commission to make stained-glass windows for the Cedar Rapids Veteran Memorial Building in 1927 and went to Munich to supervise their manufacture the following year. Influenced by the Early Netherlandish paintings he saw in museums there, he abandoned his earlier Impressionist style and began to paint in the meticulous, sharply detailed manner that characterized his mature work (he has been called ‘the Memling of the Midwest').

Wood's subjects were taken mainly from the ordinary people and everyday life of Iowa: ‘At first I felt I had to search for old things to paint—something soft and mellow. But now I have discovered a decorative quality in American newness.’ He came to national attention in 1930 with his painting American Gothic, depicting a farming couple (his sister and dentist were in fact the models) in front of a farmhouse with a pointed Gothic-style window; he had seen such a building in southern Iowa and said that ‘I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house'. The painting won a bronze medal at an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago (which now owns the work), but it aroused violent controversy because many people regarded it as an insulting caricature of plain country folk. However, it later won great popularity and is now one of the most familiar and best-loved images in American art. Wood never again achieved quite the same bite and freshness of his masterpiece, but his other work included some highly distinctive and original pictures. Among them are The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1931), which has a captivating air of fantasy, and Daughters of the Revolution (Cincinnati Art Museum, 1932), which Wood described as ‘the only satire I have ever painted'. It was his pictorial revenge on members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who had opposed the dedication of his stained-glass windows in Cedar Rapids because they had been made in Germany—America's recent enemy. As described by members of the Sons of the American Revolution, the painting showed ‘three sour-visaged, squint-eyed and repulsive-looking females, represented as disgustingly smug and smirking because of their ancestral claim to be heroes of the American Revolution'. Wood also painted some vigorous stylized landscapes, and he supervised several Iowa undertakings of the Federal Art Project. In 1934 he became assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Iowa. He died of cancer.

Wood, Grant (b nr. Anamosa, Ia., 13 Feb. 1892; d Iowa City, 12 Feb. 1942). American painter, active mainly in Iowa. Early in his career he was an artistic jack-of-all-trades. The turning point in his life came when he obtained a commission to make stained-glass windows for the Cedar Rapids Veteran Memorial Building in 1927 and went to Munich to supervise their manufacture the following year. Influenced by the Early Netherlandish paintings he saw there in the Alte Pinakothek, he abandoned his earlier Impressionist style and began to paint in the meticulous, sharply detailed manner that characterized his mature work (he has been called ‘the Memling of the Midwest’). His subjects were taken mainly from the ordinary people and everyday life of Iowa and he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of Regionalism. He first came to national attention in 1930 with American Gothic, which depicts a farming couple (his sister and dentist were in fact the models) in front of a farmhouse with a pointed Gothic-style window; he had seen such a building in southern Iowa and said that ‘I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house’. The painting won a bronze medal at an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago (which now owns the work), but it aroused violent controversy because many people regarded it as an insulting caricature of plain country folk. However, it later won great popularity and is now one of the most familiar and best-loved images in American art.

Wood never again achieved quite the same bite and freshness of his masterpiece, but his other work included some highly distinctive and original pictures. Among them are The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931, Met. Mus., New York), which has a captivating air of fantasy, and Daughters of the Revolution (1932, Cincinnati Art Mus.), which Wood described as ‘the only satire I have ever painted’. Depicting ‘three sour-visaged, squint-eyed and repulsive-looking females’, it was his pictorial revenge on members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who had opposed the dedication of his stained-glass windows in Cedar Rapids because they had been made in Germany—America's recent enemy. His other work includes some vigorous stylized landscapes, and during the 1930s he supervised several Iowa projects of the Federal Art Project. In 1934 he became assistant professor of fine arts at the university of Iowa.

Wood, Grant (1892–1942). American painter, active mainly in Iowa, his native state. Early in his career he was an artistic jack-of-all-trades. The turning point in his life came when he obtained a commission to make stained-glass windows for the Cedar Rapids Veteran Memorial Building in 1927 and went to Munich to supervise their manufacture the following year. Influenced by the Early Netherlandish paintings he saw there in the Alte Pinakothek, he abandoned his earlier Impressionist style and began to paint in the meticulous, sharply detailed manner that characterized his mature work (he has been called ‘the Memling of the Midwest’). His subjects were taken mainly from the ordinary people and everyday life of Iowa and he became recognized as one of the leading exponents of Regionalism. He first came to national attention in 1930 when his painting American Gothic won a bronze medal at an exhibition of the Art Institute of Chicago, which now owns the painting. Although at the time it aroused violent controversy and was deplored as an insulting caricature of plain country people, the painting later gained great popularity and is now one of the most familiar and best-loved images in American art. In 1931 Wood introduced an element of humorous fantasy in The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (Met. Mus., New York) and in 1932 he painted his famous satirical picture Daughters of the Revolution (Cincinnati Art Mus.), described as ‘three sour-visaged and repulsive-looking females, represented as disgustingly smug and smirking because of their ancestral claim to be heroes of the American Revolution’. His other work includes some vigorous stylized landscapes, and during the 1930s he supervised several Iowa projects of the Federal Art Project. In 1934 he became assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Iowa.

Grant Wood 1891–1942, American painter, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. In Munich in 1928 he was decisively influenced by German and Flemish primitive painting. Subsequently, in the 1930s, he created his "American scene" works in which stern people and stylized landscapes offer rigid, decorative images of the rural Midwest. Wood's work has a deceptively folksy simplicity, behind which often lie suggestions of darkness and sexuality. He taught at the State Univ. of Iowa and was director of WPA art projects in Iowa. His American Gothic (Art Inst., Chicago) and Daughters of Revolution have been many times reproduced; other works include Stone City (Joslyn Art Mus., Omaha, Nebr.) and a series of murals at Iowa State Univ.

Bibliography: See memoir by his sister, N. Wood Graham (1993); biography by R. T. Evans (2010); D. Garwood, Artist in Iowa (1944, repr. 1971); W. M. Corn, Grand Wood: The Regionalist Vision (1985, museum catalog); J. M. Dennis et al., Grant Wood: An American Master Revealed (1995, museum catalog); J. C. Milosch et al., Grant Wood's Studio (2005).