Grant Wood was an American painter. He was best known for his smoothly rendered paintings of the American Midwest.
Background
Grant Wood was born on February 13, 1891, in Anamosa, Jones County, Iowa, United States. He was the son of Francis Maryville Wood and Hattie DeVolson (Weaver) Wood. His father, who was a farmer, died in 1901, and the family moved to Cedar Rapids, Linn, Iowa, United States. He had two brothers and a sister.
Education
Grant took drawing lessons from local artists at Cedar Rapids and attended Washington High School. He studied design briefly in Minneapolis at the Handicraft Guild (then an art school) in 1910. Wood attended night classes at the Art Institute and in 1916 he registered at the Art Institute for full-time study as a "fresco painter." During his time in Paris, he studied at the Académie Julian from 1923 to 1924.
During World War I, Grant Wood served in Washington, D.C. , where he made clay models of field gun positions and helped camouflage artillery pieces. In 1919, he was hired as an art teacher at Jackson Junior High School.
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. 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 1920's 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.
From 1934 to 1941, he taught painting at the University of Iowa's School of Art in Iowa City, and served as state director for art projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). 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 of cancer in Iowa City on February 12, 1942.
Untitled, from suite Savage Iowa (Indian and Cowboy)
1923
Sketch for house in American Gothic
1930
Sultry Night
1939
The Thresher's supper
1934
Seed Time and Harvest
1937
Puberty
1940
The Usual Place
1919
Cultivation of Flower
1938
Iowa View
1941
Street
1920
Honorary Degree
1938
Unknown Tree
1907
The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover
1931
Iowa's Product
1932
Helix Welder
1925
The church of Paris
1920
Fertility
1939
A lust for home
1921
Break ground
1936
The day have fog
1920
Portrait of Nan
1933
The Painting, on the fireplace
1930
Osier
1920
December Afternoon
1940
New Road
1939
Family Doctor
1940
The Appraisal
1931
Return From Bohemia
1935
In the Spring
1939
Dinner for Threshers
1934
Iowa's Product
1932
Old Stone and barn
1919
Untitled, from suite Savage Iowa (Buffalo Stampede)
1923
March
1939
February
1940
Shrine Quartet
1939
Arnold Comes of Age
1930
The Corn field
1925
The Little Chapel Chancelade
1926
Daughters of Revolution
1932
Miss France
1929
Spring's Oak
1932
The Courtyard of Italy
1924
Spring Plowing
1932
City-gate of Paris
1920
A short break from pasture work
1939
Woman with Plants
1929
At the Gate
1926
The Gate within The City walls
1920
The sentimental folk song
1940
Near Sundown
1933
Landscape
1931
Iowa's corn field
1941
Old shoes
1926
The Stone of Wall 1
1930
The Bay of Naples's View
1925
Carriage Business
1918
Approaching Storm
1940
Haying
1939
Arbor Day
1932
Young Corn
1931
The Church doorway
1926
The canterer of Luxembourg Park
1924
Parson Weem's Fable
1939
January
1940
Spring in the Country
1941
The cafe of Paris corner
1920
Fall Plowing
1931
The Landscape of Autumn
1919
The Tree
1923
Views
Quotations:
"All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow."
"You can do anything with beer that you can do with wine. Beer is great for basting or marinating meat and fish."
"I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa."
"You can do anything with beer that you can do with wine. Beer is great for basting or marinating meat and fish."
Connections
Grant Wood was married to Sarah Sherman Maxon, a singer from Cedar Rapids, from 1935 – 1938.
Father:
Francis Maryville Wood
Mother:
Hattie DeVolson Wood
Spouse:
Sarah Sherman Maxon
Brother:
John Clifford Wood
Sister:
Nan Wood Graham
Brother:
Frank Wood
Friend:
Marvin Cone
References
Grant Wood
The book relates the artistic career of the Iowan who painted people, life, and customs of the American Midwest and whose style became known as Regionalism.
Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision
The book traces the life of the Iowa artist, discusses his regionalistic approach to art, and explains why he has been out of favor with critics in the past.
1983
Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables
Exploring Wood’s oeuvre from a variety of perspectives, this book presents the artist’s work in all of its subtle complexity and eschews the idea that Wood can be categorized simply as a Regionalist painter.