Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables
Mar 2–June 10, 2018
Commissions and Impressionist Paintings
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Like many American artists of his generation, Grant Wood initially looked to Europe as the center of culture. He went abroad four times between 1920 and 1928 for a total of twenty-three months, primarily studying the work of the French Impressionists, whose loose brushwork he adopted in the first two decades of his career to paint what he later called “Europy-looking” subjects. His assimilation of the style served him well in Cedar Rapids. By the early 1920s, he had become the city’s leading artist, selling his paintings to its residents and executing commissions in a variety of styles according to each project’s needs.
Adoration of the Home, 1921–22
Grant Wood (1891–1942), Adoration of the Home, 1921–22. Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 27 3⁄4 x 81 1⁄4 in. (70.5 x 206.4 cm). Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Iowa; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Peter F. Bezanson 80.1. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Wood was hired by Cedar Rapids realtor Henry Ely to paint Adoration of the Home as an advertisement for the developer’s model homes. Drawing on the visual language of Renaissance altarpieces, Wood used local figures as models in this neoclassical allegory of Cedar Rapids’ growth and modernity. The central female figure, presented as a secular Madonna, symbolizes Cedar Rapids. Holding one of Ely’s model homes aloft as if it were a devotional object, she is surrounded by figures personifying religion and education. On either side of this trio are figures representing the prairie and the city. On the far right, Mercury, the god of commerce, raises his staff with one hand and cradles a bag of money in the other.