Grant Wood (1891–1942)

Iowa Landscape—“The Crik,” 1934

Oil on board

12 1/2 x 14 5/8 inches

Katherine G. Ordway Fund, 91.29.01

Essay by Donald Myers
Hillstrom Museum of Art, Gustavus Adolphus College

           Grant Wood, at the height of his career, was one of the most famous artists in America.  He catapulted to success with the debut of his instantly recognizable American Gothic (1930), becoming the chief proponent of regionalism—which flourished in the depression years of the 1930s.  Regionalism stemmed the influence of European art and the East Coast establishment on American art as artists embraced local subjects.  For Wood, this meant recognizing the viability of the Iowa countryside, as well as the farmers and others who inhabited and worked it.

           Iowa Landscape—“The Crik” dates from what was arguably the high point of Wood’s creativity.  Its application of paint is somewhat looser than is often found in Wood’s mature works and, although the painting is not marked as a sketch (which the artist at times would do), its handling and relatively small size make it comparable to Wood’s sketches, which were frequently very appealing in their spontaneity.[1]

           Signed and dated 1934, the Minnesota Museum of American Art’s painting was made for Eleanor Jessup, whose husband, Walter Jessup, was the University of Iowa president responsible for Wood’s appointment to its faculty in that year, just before he left to direct the Carnegie Foundation in New York City.  A letter from Mrs. Jessup to Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, best known as the female model for the dour couple depicted in American Gothic, records circumstances of the painting’s creation.  Dated February 18, 1942, it was sent in response to Wood’s death from pancreatic cancer on February 12.  In it, Mrs. Jessup calls the artist a “good friend,” and describes the painting:

And did you know that I have one of his lovely landscapes?  He painted it especially for me when we were leaving.  He said, not wanting to remind me of the Iowa dust storms, he looked for a green creek bed to paint, so he called it “The Crick” in the middle-western manner.  My good fortune in having it seems unbelievable.[2]

           The locale Wood depicted appears likely to have been Indian Creek, a setting he painted several times in his career that was not far from Cedar Rapids, Iowa—where he lived much of his adult life—and very near where Wood and his mother Hattie lived for a part of 1916.  The painting shows steeply-cut banks and relatively few trees, consistent with how the area around Indian Creek appeared in the 1930s, when effects of erosion were strong.[3]  Indian Creek, which flows into the Cedar River east of central Cedar Rapids, is still often called “Indian Crick.”  Wood seems to have been fond enough of the regional pronunciation to use the variant “Crik” as the painting’s subtitle, although his wife Sara is reported to have derisively inquired about things back in “Cedar Crick” after she and Wood moved to Iowa City following their sudden and surprising marriage.[4]

           Wood’s sexuality has been the subject of a great deal of speculation.  A recently published biography by art historian R. Tripp Evans delves into rumors circulating during Wood’s lifetime that he was a closeted homosexual.[5]  Evans reexamines a number of Wood’s landscapes, the swelling forms of which had been compared to the female body in earlier literature produced under the watchful eye of Wood’s sister Nan (who until her death in 1990 had made it her responsibility to protect her brother’s artistic and personal reputation).[6]  In Wood’s 1930 Stone City, which marked the debut of his regionalist landscape style, Evans notes rolling hills that suggest the nude male form and cites phallic imagery—along with sly, nearly hidden references to homosexual culture of the era—in that painting and others.[7]  The idiosyncratic phallic shape of the shadow in the center of this painting may be such a reference.

           The artist’s inclusion of a small windmill above that shadow was a trademark; windmills are found in several of his works, including the well-known Self-Portrait (1932/1941).  Nan Wood Graham noted that “windmills were so much a part of Grant’s life that he decided to use one as his trademark,” quoting him as saying:  “The Old Masters all had their trademarks, and mine will be the windmill.  Wherever it is feasible to use it, I will.”[8]  Wood’s insertion of the motif in this painting perhaps serves not only as an additional signature to his name in the lower left corner, but might also highlight the personal significance to the artist of the area around “The Crik.”

[1] Thanks to Terence Pitts, Director of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, for sharing his insights on this painting and Wood’s oil sketch Stone City Landscape (1932).

[2] Grant Wood scrapbooks, 1900–1962, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm reel 1216.

[3] Thanks to Rich Patterson, Director of the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for information regarding Indian Creek in the 1930s.

[4] Hazel E. Brown, Grant Wood and Marvin Cone: Artists of an Era (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1972), 91.

[5] R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).  Evans outlines hints in newspaper stories and cites an official record of discussions within the University of Iowa administration in 1941 that specifically referred to Wood’s alleged homosexuality.  This was first published in Joni Kinsey, “Cultivating Iowa: An Introduction to Grant Wood,” in Grant Wood’s Studio, Birthplace of American Gothic, Jane C. Milosch, ed. (Cedar Rapids: Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, 2005), 29.  Thanks to Kinsey for her consultation during research for this essay.

[6] Wanda Corn, introduction to My Brother, Grant Wood, by Nan Wood Graham with John Zug and Julie Jensen McDonald (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1993). 

[7] Among the relatively few nudes Wood created, all of which were male nudes, Evans cites a surprisingly sensual oil painting in triptych format titled Nude Bather that depicts Wood’s young male neighbor disrobing at Indian Creek.  A Life, 248.

[8] Graham, Zug, and McDonald, My Brother, p. 83.