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Lot Essay
One of the most iconic images of American art, American Gothic has transcended the original 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago to become one of the most well-recognized archetypes of small-town American life in the early 20th Century. Reproduced and reinterpreted countless times, American Gothic not only established the enduring fame of Wood as the foremost American Regionalist painter but also created an indelible image of the American people within popular culture that has only grown in its reach since its creation a century ago.
As the only surviving preparatory sketch, the present work uniquely memorializes the conception of this masterwork composition. In August 1930, Wood visited Eldon, a small town in southeast Iowa, to stay with Edward Rowan, the first director of the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids, who was opening a new space for exhibitions and classes. While there to demonstrate plein air painting to students, Wood took a car ride with local artist John Sharp and was immediately struck by the house with Gothic windows that inspired this famous work. He made a sketch in oil paint of the architecture, which is now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and asked that the home be photographed.
Executed on the back of an envelope, Wood outlined the full composition for his painting in the present drawing. While there were likely other drawings made during the process, this work is the unique surviving conceptual sketch of the full painting. Here, Wood notably adds in the two figures and labels it with the famous title “American Gothic.” Wood explained, “Any northern town old enough to have some buildings dating back to the civil war is liable to have a house or church in the American Gothic style. I simply invented some American Gothic people to stand in front of a house of this type…The people in ‘American Gothic’ are not farmers but are small-town, as the shirt on the man indicates. They are American, however, and it is unfair to localize them to Iowa.” (as quoted in Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables, New York, 2018, p. 212) Wood had his sister, Nan, and a local dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, stand as models for these American archetypes, and two months later the painting was completed. The present drawing is almost identical in design to the final version, apart from a rake in the man’s hand rather than the pitchfork.
The American Gothic painting was published on the front page of the Chicago Evening Post’s art section in October 1930 as part of a review two days before the opening of its debut at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Forty–third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, and immediately became a sensation across the national press as something truly “American.” The painting was awarded the Norman Wait Harris medal and acquired by the Friends of American Art Collection for the Art Institute that November.
For the past thirty-five years, this conceptual drawing has notably been in the collection of artists Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong. Red, who purchased the work as a gift for his wife, reflects, “We both love Grant Wood, who I consider to be one of the best American painters of the twentieth century." Shortly after acquiring the drawing, he created his own interpretation of the famous image in his 1990 painting Russian Rustic.
As the only surviving preparatory sketch, the present work uniquely memorializes the conception of this masterwork composition. In August 1930, Wood visited Eldon, a small town in southeast Iowa, to stay with Edward Rowan, the first director of the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids, who was opening a new space for exhibitions and classes. While there to demonstrate plein air painting to students, Wood took a car ride with local artist John Sharp and was immediately struck by the house with Gothic windows that inspired this famous work. He made a sketch in oil paint of the architecture, which is now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and asked that the home be photographed.
Executed on the back of an envelope, Wood outlined the full composition for his painting in the present drawing. While there were likely other drawings made during the process, this work is the unique surviving conceptual sketch of the full painting. Here, Wood notably adds in the two figures and labels it with the famous title “American Gothic.” Wood explained, “Any northern town old enough to have some buildings dating back to the civil war is liable to have a house or church in the American Gothic style. I simply invented some American Gothic people to stand in front of a house of this type…The people in ‘American Gothic’ are not farmers but are small-town, as the shirt on the man indicates. They are American, however, and it is unfair to localize them to Iowa.” (as quoted in Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables, New York, 2018, p. 212) Wood had his sister, Nan, and a local dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, stand as models for these American archetypes, and two months later the painting was completed. The present drawing is almost identical in design to the final version, apart from a rake in the man’s hand rather than the pitchfork.
The American Gothic painting was published on the front page of the Chicago Evening Post’s art section in October 1930 as part of a review two days before the opening of its debut at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Forty–third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, and immediately became a sensation across the national press as something truly “American.” The painting was awarded the Norman Wait Harris medal and acquired by the Friends of American Art Collection for the Art Institute that November.
For the past thirty-five years, this conceptual drawing has notably been in the collection of artists Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong. Red, who purchased the work as a gift for his wife, reflects, “We both love Grant Wood, who I consider to be one of the best American painters of the twentieth century." Shortly after acquiring the drawing, he created his own interpretation of the famous image in his 1990 painting Russian Rustic.