American Gothic

The story of American Gothic

A man in overalls and a black jacket holds a three-tined pitchfork straight up and looks at you without expression. Beside him a woman in a rickrack-trimmed apron looks off to the side with her mouth set. Behind them a white farmhouse with a single pointed Gothic window. Grant Wood saw the house in Eldon, Iowa, in 1930 and painted the couple to go with it, using his sister and his dentist as models, and the Art Institute of Chicago bought it that year. Iowans were offended, the rest of the country was delighted, and it has been parodied more than any other American painting since.

On a wall, American Gothic is cleaner and calmer than its reputation. The dominant colors are the white of the house, the black of the man's jacket, the blue of the overalls, and the muted brown and green of the apron and the trees, with warm skin in the middle. It suits a kitchen, a dining room, an entryway, a home office, or a farmhouse mudroom, and it fits farmhouse, Americana, mid-century, and dry-humored modern interiors. It is a tall image. The Large at 24 × 29 in is close to the original's size and the one for a wall of its own; the Medium at 16 × 19.3 in works above a console or a desk.

Grant Wood's Daughters of Revolution is his other deadpan portrait of Midwestern rectitude. Hopper's Nighthawks is the other American icon in the same museum, and Whistler's Mother is the earlier American picture of stern composure. More from Grant Wood.

Printed in our studio from the Art Institute of Chicago's photograph of the panel, with the whites and blacks held where Wood set them.