October 30, 1930: Grant Wood's Painting "American Gothic" Is Introduced

October 30, 1930: Grant Wood's painting American Gothic is put on display. It becomes an American classic.

Grant DeVolson Wood was born on February 13, 1891 in Anamosa, Iowa, and grows up in nearby Cedar Rapids. He enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, and designed camouflage scenes for the U.S. Army during World War I. He spent the early 1920s teaching art in the Cedar Rapids public schools, and the late 1920s studying art in Europe.

A self-portrait, 1932

In August 1930, he was driven around Eldon, Iowa by John Sharp, a young local painter. He saw the Dibble House on Finney Avenue. Built in 1882 by railroad worker Charles Dibble, it was a typical small farmhouse, but Wood sketched it on the back of an envelope in the car. His first biographer, Darrell Garwood, wrote that he "thought it a form of borrowed pretentiousness, a structural absurdity, to put a Gothic-style window in such a flimsy frame house.

A recent photo of the house

The house was then owned by Selma Jones-Johnston, and Wood gained her permission to paint a portrait, with the house in the background. But instead of the Johnston family, he painted "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." His models were his sister, Nan Wood Graham (1899-1990), wearing a colonial-print apron; and his family's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby (1867-1950), holding a pitchfork.

The age difference has always caught people's attention: McKeeby was 63 years old, and Nan was 31, although, standing next to him, and with the grayish-blue background, her blonde hair could be considered gray. But in a letter written in 1941, Wood confirmed, "The prim lady with him is his grown-up daughter."

Wood entered the painting in a competition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a museum patron convinced the jury to award the painting a bronze medal, and the Institute to buy the painting, where it remains to this day.

When the image appeared in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, the people of Iowa were angry that Wood had depicted them as "pinched, grim-faced, puritanical Bible-thumpers." (Or did he hit a nerve? Find video of the Republican side of the Iowa Caucuses sometime.) Many observers from outside the Hawkeye State considered it a criticism of rural and/or small-town American live, such as the novels Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Wood said his aim was the complete opposite, saying, "I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa."

But the Great Depression was on, and it got deeper. The old man and the grown daughter began to be seen as a depiction of the American pioneer spirit, standing strong against hardships like the economic disaster, banks alternating between predation and their own failure, and the Dust Bowl. 

Wood taught art at the University of Iowa, but developed pancreatic cancer, and died on February 12, 1942, only 50 years old. As he had married and divorced, and had no children -- it has been suggested that he was gay -- Nan inherited his estate. Upon her death, she willed his artistic legacy to the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa.

In 1991, the last private owner of the American Gothic House donated it to the State Historical Society of Iowa. The historic site now includes the house, in its original form, and a visitors center. The Society has rented it to a series of live-in caretakers.

*

October 30, 1930 was a Thursday. Baseball season was over. The NFL was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season didn't start for another 12 days. But there was 1 score on this historic day, a college football game: The University of South Carolina beat another Palmetto State school, the Charleston military college The Citadel, 13-0 at the County Fairgrounds in Orangeburg, South Carolina.