Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Pamela Blaine

December 13, 2007

American Gothic

Pamela Blaine

 “That house looks familiar,” I said as we drove through the Iowa countryside.  We had come upon a small frame house that looked much like any other farmhouse of many years ago except for the unusual window in the second story.   The window was larger than normal with an arch that came to a point at the top.  It looked like an elegant Gothic-style window that would be found in a church rather than a small cottage.

It wasn’t long until we noticed a new building, a visitor’s center, located just across from the house so we went inside to see what was there.  We soon discovered why the house looked so familiar.  It was the house that Grant Wood sketched back in 1930 and took back with him to his studio and then painted this very house in oil on beaverboard.

Grant Wood decided that he wanted to paint the kind of people that he imagined might live in the farmhouse, so he came up with the idea to paint a father and his unmarried daughter who would be standing out in front of the house.  He needed a couple to pose for the painting so he chose two completely unrelated people to paint into the foreground of the painting of the house.  He chose his dentist Dr. Byron H. McKeeby, to depict the father and then he asked his own sister, Nan Wood Graham, to pose as the daughter for the painting.  Grant Wood painted a balding, somber faced Dr. McKeeby holding a three-pronged hayfork and his sister, Nan, he also painted with a similarly dour expression.  He painted them into the picture in front of the house.  Thus, the little Iowa farmhouse near Eldon, Iowa became the background for the famous painting titled, American Gothic.  

There are probably a lot of people who don’t even realize that the house portrayed in the famous painting, American Gothic, was a real house and that it is still standing in the countryside of Eldon, Iowa. 

The house was built in the 1880s and was of board and batten construction.  It is thought that the window may have simply been purchased from a kit that was sold through a Sears & Roebuck catalog.  During that period of time, almost anything could be bought through mail order catalogs, even kits to build houses.

Nearly everyone has seen the painting American Gothic because it has been used in so many different places.  It has been seen as advertising on the front of cornflake cereal boxes as well as having been used as caricatures of famous couples.  We have seen everything from presidents and wives to Kermit and Miss Piggy parodying the painting.  It is not surprising then that American Gothic has come to be the number two most recognized painting in the world. 

The painting was first exhibited in 1930, at the Art Institute in Chicago and won a prize of $300.00.  The painting caused quite a stir at that time.  Some Iowans thought that the picture was making fun of country folks and making them look hard faced and unfriendly and would cause a stereotype of all Midwestern farmers.  One woman even protested and wrote that the expression on Nan’s face, would “sour milk”.  However, as we know, the painting went on to become famous.

Some things that are notable in the American Gothic painting are how Grant Wood seemed to echo the architectural designs of the house.  If you look closely, you will see the same lines of the house referenced in the lines of the hayfork, the lines in the face of the man, his shirt, and overalls.  The same lines can be seen throughout the painting.

As for the artist himself, Grant Wood was born in Alamosa, Iowa, on February 13, 1891, and moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after the death of his father.  He became known around Cedar Rapids as the “town artist”.  He was a self-taught artist and many of his paintings were of landscapes and grain fields that so depicted the rural American Midwest.  On February 12, 1942, Grant Wood died just one day before his 51^st birthday.

In 2006, the American Gothic Visitor Center opened across the street from this famous house near Eldon, Iowa.  There is a museum and a gift shop there where visitors are met with a smile and friendly Midwest hospitality.  Who would have thought that a small farmhouse in Iowa would someday be listed on the National Register of Historic Places all because of an artist who happened by and saw something unusual in a small farmhouse with a Gothic window upstairs.

People see different things in the American Gothic painting.  There are some who notice the architectural lines in the painting and the colors used while others see the stern expressions on the faces and think that surely it is true that with time regional families begin to resemble one another in mannerisms and appearance.

Personally, I don’t think there is any resemblance at all in today’s Midwesterners and the American Gothic painting.  Take a look and see for yourself.  Perhaps it’s just hard work and fresh country air that makes us all so deliriously happy.  What do you think?

By

Pamela Perry Blaine

© September 2007

pamyblaine@blaines.us