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.
Soldier in the War of 1812 (Cannoneer), 1927
Grant Wood (1812–1942), Soldier in the War of 1812 (Cannoneer), 1927. Ink and graphite on paper, 79 3⁄4 x 22 3⁄4 in. (202.6 x 57.8 cm). Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, City of Davenport Art Collection, Grant Wood Archive; museum purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund 1965.8. © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
In 1927 Wood was awarded a commission to create a stained-glass window for Cedar Rapids’ planned Veterans Memorial Building honoring America’s war dead. He spent a year methodically researching the uniforms soldiers wore in the country’s six wars to date and making to scale drawings of each figure such as this one. After the city approved his sketch in early 1928, Wood hired Emil Frei Art Glass, a St. Louis company with a branch in Munich, to execute his design in stained glass. That fall, Wood traveled to Germany to supervise production. The experience of working with the hard-edge shapes and smooth surfaces of the stained glass rekindled a delight in craftsmanly exactitude that he had abandoned in adopting the loose brushwork of Impressionism; this revelation proved instrumental to the development of his mature art.