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American Gothic
Grant Wood
Painted on beaver board — a compressed wood-pulp panel whose behaviour under humidity dictates every loan condition.
- Artist
- Grant Wood
- Date
- 1930
- Medium
- Oil on beaver board
- Dimensions
- 78 × 65.3 cm
- Location
- Art Institute of Chicago
History
What the record shows
Wood painted his sister Nan and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, in front of a Carpenter Gothic farmhouse in Eldon, Iowa.
It won a bronze medal at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930 and was bought by the museum for three hundred dollars.
The panel support expands and contracts sharply with relative humidity. Its rare loans travel in sealed, buffered microclimate cases.
Provenance
Chain of ownership
- 01Purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago from the artist, 1930
- 02Held continuously in the Art Institute collection
