Collection Online as of January 31, 2023

(American, 1891–1942)

Oil on masonite panel

Framed: 67 x 82.5 x 7.5 cm (26 3/8 x 32 1/2 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 45.7 x 60.1 cm (18 x 23 11/16 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2002.2

Art © Figge Art Museum, successors to the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Location

226B American Modern

Fun Fact

For many years Wood maintained his painting studio on the property of a funeral home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Description

One of the last paintings Wood created before his untimely death from liver cancer, January has a decidedly nostalgic cast. According to the artist, the painting was "deeply rooted in the memories of my early childhood on an Iowa farm. . . . it is a land of plenty here which seems to rest, rather than suffer, under the cold." One sign of activity, in the form of rabbit tracks, infiltrates the otherwise dormant scene. Wood’s composition teems with abstract design, most notably through the rhythmically geometric array of snow-laden corn shocks that seem to recede infinitely into the distance.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed and dated lower left: Grant Wood/1940

Provenance

2002-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

-2002

(Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)

Private collector, New Jersey

1982-

King W. Vidor Trust

1941-1982

King Vidor [1894-1982] and Elizabeth Hill Vidor [1901-1978], Beverly Hills, CA

Citations

Maroney, Jr., James H. Fresh Perspectives on Grant Wood, Charles Sheeler, and George Durrie. Leicester, VT: Gala Books, Ltd, 2019. Mentioned: p.39, 46, 52, 80; Reproduced p. 45.

Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., wire transfer request for purchase of painting, March 7, 2002, in CMA curatorial file.

James Berry Hill, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, April 8, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

Nygard, Travis Earl. "Seeds of Agribusiness: Grant Wood and the Visual Culture of Grain Farming, 1862-1957." Ph.D. diss, University of Pittsburgh, 2009. Mentioned P. 196; Reproduced P. 242.

Taylor, Sue. Grant Wood's Secrets (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2020.

Parnassus, May, 1940, illus.

Grant Wood, letter to King Vidor, April 26,1941.

"The Important Works of Grant Wood," Demcourier 7 (May, 1942). Reproduced: p. 17

"The Middle Western Scene from Memorial Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at the Chicago Art Institute October 29 to December 29," The Chicago Daily News, October 17, 1942. Reproduced: p. 12

"Grant Wood: Iowa's No. 1 Artist Who Died Last Winter Gets Big Retrospective Show in Chicago," Life, January 18, 1943, illus. p. 57. Reproduced: p. 57

Garwood, Darrell. Artist in Iowa: A Life of Grant Wood. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1944. Mentioned: p.209; Reproduced: p. 224, 254

Weigel Brown, Helen. "Have you ever bought a painting?" House Beautiful (December, 1945). Reproduced: p. 103

'Regional Paintings by Corn Belt artists are Among Nation's Best." Holiday Magazine (November, 1948). Reproduced: p. 148

Dennis, James M. Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture. New York: Viking Press, 1975. Mentioned: p. 201; Reproduced: p. 202, plate 38

Czestochowski, Joseph S. John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood: A Portrait of Rural America. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981. Mentioned: o.128-136,208,210-211

Corn, Wanda M., and Grant Wood. Grant Wood, the Regionalist Vision. New Haven: Published for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Yale University Press, 1983. Mentioned: cat. no. 62, Reproduced: fig. 102, p. 60.

James Maroney Incoportated advertisement, Art in America 71 no. 9 (October, 1983). Reproduced: p. 18

James Maroney Incorporated advertisement. The Magazine Antiques (November, 1983) 124, no. 5. Reproduced: p. 821

Kuspit, Donald B. "Grant Wood: Pathos of the Plain." Art in America 72 no. 3 (March, 1984). Reproduced: p. 142

Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc. Advertisement. The Magazine Antiques (February,1987), 131, no. 2. Reproduced: p. 322

Woiwode, Larry. "Against the Grain: A Writer's Personal Odyssey Through Grant Wood's Vision of America." Art & Antiques 6, no. 1(January, 1988). Mentioned: p. 76; Reproduced: p. 76

Duggleby, John. Artist in Overalls: The Life of Grant Wood. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995. Reproduced: p. 30

Litt Steven. "Museum Buys Major Painting by Grant Wood." The Plain Dealer, March 7, 2002.

Tranberg, Dan. "Art Matters: Museum Arranges Modern Works to Tell History Better." The Plain Dealer, August 16, 2002.illus.

"Major Acquisitions 2000-2005." Cleveland Art 45 (July/August 2005). Mentioned: p. 7, 14, 18

Adams, Henry. What's American about American Art? A Gallery Tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008. Mentioned: p. 139; Reproduced: p. 138

Walker, Andrew. Joe Jones: Radical Painter of the American Scene. Seattle: Saint Louis Art Museum in association with University of Washington Press, 2010. Reproduced: p. 75

Maroney, Jr., James H. Hiding in Plain Sight: Decoding the Homoerotic and Misogynistic Imagery of Grant Wood. Leicester: Gala Books, 2013. Mentioned: p. 10, 47-48, 55-56, 58,82; Reproduced: p. 47

Haskell, Barbara. Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Reproduced: p. 192, pl. 100

The Burlington Magazine. "Exhibitions." The Burlington Magazine 160, no.1383 (June 2018). Reproduced: p. 503, fig. 18

Maroney, James H. Fresh Perspectives on Grant Wood, Charles Sheeler, and George H. Durrie. Leicester, VT: Gala Books, Ltd., 2019. Reproduced: p. 45

Stokes Sims, Lowery. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned: cat. no. 79, p. 120, Reproduced: p. 72

Exhibition history

Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Fifty-Third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture (29 October-10 December 1942), cat. no. 14.

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Grant Wood: The Regionalist Vision (16 June-4 September 1983); traveled to Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts (25 September 1983-1 January 1984); Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago (21 January-15 April 1984); San Francisco, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum (12 May-12 August 1984), cat. no. 62, illus. p. 60, fig. no. 102.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (3/2/2018 - 6/10/2018): "Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables"

The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).

Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (organizer) (March 2-June 10, 2018).