Wood Grant - Grant Wood: a life

ALSO BY R. TRIPP EVANS

Romancing the Maya: Mexican Antiquity in the American Imagination, 18201915

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2010 by R. Tripp Evans
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Evans, R. Tripp, [date]
Grant Wood : a life / by R. Tripp Evans.1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59433-4
1. Wood, Grant, 18911942. 2. PaintersUnited StatesBiography.
I. Title.
ND 237. W 795 E 93 2010
759.13dc22

[B] 2010018019

v3.1

Grant Wood, Return from Bohemia, 1935

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Grant Wood, Return from Bohemia, 1935.

Don Wright, Iowa, 2009.

Francis Maryville Wood, c. 1875.

Hattie D. Weaver at sixteen, 1874.

Grant Woods childhood home near Anamosa, Iowa.

Grant Wood in 1901.

Grant Wood, Senior Class, 1908.

Grant Wood, Fanciful Depiction of Round-House and Power Plant, 1920.

The Woods home on Indian Creek, 191617.

3178 Grove Court, Kenwood Park.

Washington High School class of 1910.

Paul C. Hanson in 1909.

Vida H. Hanson in 1923.

Grant Wood in his army uniform, 1917.

Hattie Wood in 1919.

Frances Fan Prescott in the 1920s.

Grant Wood in Paris, 1920.

Grant Woods 1923 Christmas card.

Grant Wood with his McKinley Junior High School art students, 1921.

The Imagination Isles (detail), 1921.

Exterior of Grant Woods carriage-house studio on Turner Alley.

Interior of 5 Turner Alley, c. 1925.

Grant Wood, door to 5 Turner Alley, 1924.

Grant Wood at eighteen.

Grant Wood, cannoneer sketch for Memorial Window, 1928.

Grant Wood with colleagues at the Emil Frei Art Glass Company, Munich, 1928.

Grant Wood, Return from Bohemia, 1935.

Grant Wood, Cocks-Combs, c. 192529.

The Persephone cameo from American Gothic.

Hattie Wood at seventy-one.

Grant Wood, American Gothic (detail), 1930.

Grant Wood, Woman with Plants (detail), 1929.

Carl Flick at his easel in West Amana, 1937.

Arnold Pyle in the summer of 1932.

Matilda Peet, late nineteenth century.

Grant Wood, Young Corn, 1931.

Grant Wood, Appraisal (detail), 1931.

Ed Rowan, 1932.

Stone City Art Colony, summer 1932.

Grant Wood at the Stone City Art Colony, summer 1932.

Two unidentified Stone City Art Colony students, 1932.

Adrian Dornbush and Grant Wood, 1932.

A life-drawing class at the Stone City Art Colony, 1932.

John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, summer 1933.

Grant Wood, Dinner for Threshers, 1934.

Grant Wood, Dinner for Threshers (detail), 1934.

Grant Wood, Mourners Bench, c. 192122.

Thomas Hart Benton, Self-Portrait, 1925.

The Victorian Revival interior Grant Wood designed for The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Speakers, Iowa City.

Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, 1935.

Thomas W. Duncan and MacKinlay Kantor, c. 1936.

Grant Wood with his wife, Sara, c. 1935.

Sara Sherman Maxon as Alan-a-Dale, c. 1912.

Grant Wood, Spilt Milk, from Farm on the Hill, 1936.

Grant and Sara Wood, summer 1935.

Exterior of 1142 East Court Street, Iowa City.

Grant Wood and Nan Wood Graham, Iowa City, c. 1939.

Grant Wood, The Radical, 193637.

Grant Wood, The Perfectionist, 193637.

Grant Wood, Sentimental Yearner, 193637.

Grant Wood, Draft Horse, 1933.

Grant Wood, Race Horse, 1933.

Grant Wood, Tame Flowers, 1938.

Grant Wood, In Tragic Life, 1934.

Grant Wood with Park Rinard at 1142 East Court Street, late 1930s.

John Steuart Curry, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood, 1938.

Eugen Sandow, 1893.

Thomas Eakins, Swimming, 1885.

Grant Wood, Sultry Night, 1937.

Grant Wood, Nude Bather (alternate title: Peter Funcke at Indian Creek, Cedar Rapids, Iowa), c. 1920.

Grant Wood, Saturday Night Bath, from Farm on the Hill, 1936.

Grant Wood, Saturday Night Bath, 1937.

Grant Wood, First Three Degrees of Free Masonry, 1921.

Critius and Nesiotes, The Tyrannicides.

Grant Wood, Charles Manson as Silenus, 1928.

Grant Wood, Fertility, 1939.

Grant Wood and Eric Knight in 1941.

Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822.

Grant Wood, Shrine Quartet, 1939.

Grant Wood with Nan Wood Graham and Ed Graham, 1940.

Grant Woods summer studio in Clear Lake, Iowa, 1941.

Grant Wood sketching a student model, 1941.

Grant Wood in Malibu, 1940.

Nan Wood Graham and Dr. B. H. McKeeby, 1942.

Nan Wood Graham in 1975.

Sara Sherman on Orcas Island, Washington, 1958.

COLOR PLATES

Grant Wood, Van Antwerp Place, 192223.

Grant Wood, Adoration of the Home, 192122.

Grant Wood, The Spotted Man, 1924.

Grant Wood, Woman with Plants, 1929.

Grant Wood, Yellow Doorway, St. Emilion (Port des Clotres de lglise Collegiale), 1924.

Grant Wood (designer), Memorial Window, 192829, Veterans Memorial Building, Cedar Rapids.

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930.

Grant Wood, Stone City, 1930.

Grant Wood, Portrait of Nan, 1931.

Grant Wood, Arnold Comes of Age, 1930.

Grant Wood, Self-Portrait, 193241.

Grant Wood, Appraisal, 1931.

Grant Wood, The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, 1931.

Grant Wood, Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931.

Grant Wood, Victorian Survival, 1931.

Grant Wood, Farmer with Corn and Pigs, 1932.

Grant Wood, Portrait of John B. Turner, Pioneer, 192830.

Grant Wood, Daughters of Revolution, 1932.

Grant Wood, Death on the Ridge Road, 1935.

Grant Wood, Spring Turning, 1936.

John Steuart Curry, Kansas Cornfield, 1933.

Grant Wood, Near Sundown, 1933.

Grant Wood, Parson Weems Fable, 1939.

Grant Wood, Iowa Landscape/Indian Summer, 1941.

Grant Wood, Adolescence, 1940.

S OME TIME IN THE LATE 1930S , Grant Wood confided to his sister that he had a double. Mistaken for the artist by Woods lifelong friends and even his aunt Jeanette, this shadowy figure had appeared as far away as Omaha and as uncomfortably close as the painters home in Iowa City. The story of Woods doppelgnger appears only briefly in his sister Nans memoirsthe reference is casual, the mystery left unsolvedyet it raises related questions about the impression Wood made on those who knew him best, and reveals, to use Nans words, one of the many strange by-products of her brothers fame. Typically more amused than alarmed by his own celebrity, Wood confessed that in this instance the matter makes me feel a little queer.