Say the name ‘Grant Wood,’ and for most people the first thing that comes to mind is his iconic 1930 painting, American Gothic. In fact, most people seem not to know he did anything else!
A recent visit to his home territory in eastern Iowa gave me a lot of opportunities to learn more about his life and work, but none of them was more startling than this immense stained glass window in the Veterans’ Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids.
Although the inspiration for the window project came after World War I, the figures at the lower edge honor veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War as well.
At the top, a familiar face: the model was Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, who was also the model in American Gothic and many other of his paintings.
Wood created the design for the window on paper—at full size! The drawings, which were found in 1970 stuffed behind a steam pipe in the building, were recently re-assembled on the floor of the Veterans Memorial Building to be photographed for an upcoming documentary on the window.
Wood traveled to Munich to supervise the fabrication of the window by Emil Frei Art Glass, a St Louis company with a branch in Germany.
The months he spent there allowed him to visit Munich’s museums and their collections of northern styles and newer schools; the period affected Wood’s work as he transitioned from largely Impressionist styles to the harder-edged regionalist style he’s best known for.
At left, Wood with glass technicians
Ironically, although the window was installed in 1929, there was no formal dedication until 1955 because the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution were angered by the window’s fabrication in Germany. When it was dedicated, by the way, the plaque got Wood’s birth year wrong; he was born in 1891.
Wood had his own response to the kerfuffle: his 1932 painting Daughters of Revolution.
