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Grant Wood and His Paintings
at Coe: An Artistic Legacy
Grant Wood was born February 13, 1892, to a farm family in Anamosa, Iowa. He moved with his family to
Cedar Rapids when he was ten years old, remaining here for much of his
life. Grant taught in Cedar Rapids at Jackson Junior High and
Washington and McKinley High Schools. Later in life, he was also
an Art Professor at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Grant is best known for the paintings
American Gothic and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
His younger sister Nan Wood Graham posed for American Gothic,
as did Byron McKeeby, a Cedar Rapids dentist.Coe has a substantial
collection of Grant Wood works, housed in the Perrine Gallery in
Stewart Memorial Library. The main body of the Grant Wood
collection at Coe consists of seven panels: the “Fruits of Iowa,”
murals of oil on canvas depicting farm scenes. The panels were
commissioned in 1932 for the coffee shop of the old Montrose
Hotel. When the hotel changed hands in 1956, the “Fruits of Iowa”
series was lent to Coe, where they were displayed in the Stewart
Memorial Library. Its original owner, the Eppley Foundation, with
the agreement that the college would erect a memorial plaque in the
name of Eugene Eppley, later donated the collection of panels to the
college in 1976. On the right side of the gallery, when walking
in, can be found three paintings, one each of a man with a basket of
corn and two pigs, an oval farm scene, and a woman feeding her
chickens. On the left side, there are paintings of a man with a
watermelon, holding a slice, a man milking a brown and white cow, and a
woman with fresh vegetables. Also included in the Eppley
collection, but on a different wall, is a basket of fruit. The
value of the Eppley set alone has been appraised in the millions
dollars.
The Perrine Gallery features several other Wood
works, including two sets of two lithographs for The Pulse,
Grant’s high school magazine. There is a beautiful Japanese-style
watercolor of a stork on a window shade, entitled Stork.
Also included in the collection is a charcoal on paper drawing entitled
Daughters of Revolution. The famous oil
painting of the same name, for which this was the study, currently
resides in Cleveland.
Coe also has "Malnutrition," a 1919 Wood
painting of a tall and thin Marvin Cone, Coe Alumnus and Art Professor
whose art is also on display in the library. Grant and Marvin
were longtime friends from high school. Marvin, in turn, then
painted Grant, as plump and rosy-cheeked as the Iowa natives Grant
depicted, naming the picture "Overstimulation." Sadly,
"Overstimulation" was destroyed in a fire in 1932.
Wood died on February
12, 1942, at 49. Grant Wood was
considered a "Regional" artist because he painted scenes from Midwest
farming life, but took it to heart in more than one sense; despite much
urging from many sources to move to a larger city, like Chicago or New
York, his home remained in Iowa. He summed up his love for
farming and the Iowa way of life when he said "All the really good
ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow."
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