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The most famous painting by Iowa’s most famous artist resides in, well,
Illinois. The Art Institute of Chicago bought “American Gothic” in 1930 for
$300 — the prize Grant Wood received for winning the bronze medal at the
museum’s annual Exhibition of American Paintings.
While his depiction of a stern-faced farmer and his spinster daughter
(Wood’s younger sister Nan Wood Graham and Byron McKeeby, a Cedar Rapids
dentist, posed for the portrait ) is Wood’s most recognized and most parodied
painting, it is by no means a one-shot wonder.
During a weekend tour of this patch of eastern Iowa, three of my adult
nieces and I saw dozens of witty creations and voluptuous landscapes by Wood,
an “artist in overalls” who led the Regionalist art movement and whose works
inspired by the dirt-poor Midwest were purchased by the rich and famous
including Katharine Hepburn and Cole Porter.
The “girls” and I checked into the Shaw House bed-and-breakfast, an
Italianate mansion on an Anamosa hilltop. It was built by a former Civil War
colonel in 1872, 19 years before Wood was born to a nearby family of Quaker
farmers. Wood attended the one-room Antioch schoolhouse, which still stands
just east of town on Iowa Highway 64, from 1898-1901. The building was last
used as a school in 1959, and the land around it is now called Grant Wood
Memorial Park, and a nearby building houses exhibits by other area artists.
The restored schoolhouse can be visited during an open house on June 11. (For
other weekends, tours can be arranged by writing to Margaret Brown, 204 N.
Huber, Anamosa, IA 52205.)
The Shaw House is beautiful, though some say it’s haunted, and it’s an
ideal base for touring Wood-related sites. Arriving on a Saturday, we set out
to search for some nightlife in nearby Stone City, site of the artist colony
founded by Wood in 1932 and subject of his 1930 oil “Stone City.” (Wood
converted an 1890 stone mansion into a dormitory and studios. It later
reverted to being a privately owned home. Writer Paul Engle lived there when a
fire in 1963 destroyed much of it.) We could still see a stone barn from 1889
and a stone church with an Italian marble altar and stained glass from Munich,
Germany. But we couldn’t see the painting “Stone City” on this trip — it’s in
the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.
As consolation, we rubbed elbows with the locals letting off steam at the
General Store, a pub housed in a limestone structure immortalized in Wood’s
painting. (It’s the building just to the right of the bridge across the
Wapsipinicon River in his stylized portrait of a small town amid rolling hills
and rounded shrubs.)
Stone City also is host to an annual Grant Wood Art Festival, held the
second Sunday in June (June 11 — next Sunday — this year). If you’re in the
mood to pose for your own “American Gothic,” there’s a replica of the small
white house with the memorable arched window. (The original, privately owned
house that Wood sketched as his backdrop — later adding his two models — is
about 150 miles southwest in tiny Eldon.)
After our evening of beer, beef and pizza, and a sumptuous Shaw House
breakfast of homemade muffins, zucchini bread, coffee cake, egg-and-sausage
casserole, fresh fruit and juice, it was time to work off some of our
calories.
It was an easy, 35-mile drive east through rolling hills to Maquoketa Caves
State Park, where we spent an hour or so hiking in the woods and climbing into
some of the park’s 13 caves. Be sure to bring a flashlight — and one of the
free park maps posted by the restrooms.
There’s also lots of hiking to do through Maquoketa’s antique shops, but we
opted to return to Main Street in Anamosa to poke around the shops and grab a
quick BLT and chocolate malt at the Opera House Cafe.
Tucked between some resale shops is the Grant Wood Tourism Center and
Gallery. More of an information center than a gallery, it’s staffed by
volunteers who can answer your questions about the artist and his works.
That afternoon we decided to do something Wood and his widowed mother also
did: pull up stakes and move 25 miles west to Cedar Rapids. Wood spent most of
his life there, graduating from Washington High School and teaching art at
Jackson Junior High and McKinley High School. (He also was an instructor at
the University of Iowa in Iowa City, 20 miles to the south.)
Author William L. Shirer (“Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”) was one of
his childhood buddies. So was David Turner, whose family established a
mortuary in a stately colonial home in the center of town. In later years,
Turner hired Wood to decorate the mansion. Impressed by Wood’s talent, but
surprised by his apparent disinterest in making any money off his paintings,
Turner took Wood under his wing, suggesting he set up a studio in a hayloft in
the mortuary’s stable.
The building became Wood’s residence from 1924 to 1934, and today No. 5
Turner Alley is on the National Register of Historic places.
At Turner’s death, his extensive collection of Wood’s early works was given
to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. There we viewed a collection that includes
several paintings Wood created in Paris during the 1920s as well as Wood’s
final work, 1941’s “Spring in the Country,” a painting of a woman hoeing and a
small boy planting cabbages.
Cedar Rapids’ Coe College is a great place to see Wood’s work in a
pleasant, peaceful setting. While the fresh-faced students studied at the
college’s Stewart Memorial Library, I perused some 20 pieces by Wood,
including a pencil, charcoal and chalk sketch of “Daughters of Revolution.”
(The eventual oil painting, once owned by the actor Edward G. Robinson and
depicting three pursed-lipped women, hangs in Cleveland.)
One of the more amusing pieces at Coe is “Malnutrition,” a 1919 Wood
painting of his friend Cone, a tall, skinny artist. Cone in turn painted the
round-faced Wood, naming his piece “Overstimulation.” Cone’s painting of Wood
was destroyed in a 1932 fire, but Wood fans can still feast their eyes on
“Malnutrition.”
The Coe exhibit also includes lithographs Wood did for The Pulse, his high
school magazine, plus seven panels of the “Fruits of Iowa” murals that had
been commissioned in 1932 for the coffee shop of what was then the downtown
Montrose Hotel. Lovely in their simplicity, they bear typical Wood-esque
titles such as “Man Feeding Hogs” and “Girl With String Beans.”
Next I ventured just a few blocks from the library to the Veterans Memorial
Building to see the 20- by 24-foot stained glass window Wood designed to honor
“the sacred memory of the men and women who gave their lives in defense of our
country.”Wood used glass made in Munich and supervised the window’s
installation.
We found still more Wood lore at The History Center, the year-old Linn
County Historical Society museum. Curator Marise McDermott showed us a photo
of Wood and others holding a bison horn found on a dig near rural Waubeek on
the Waspsipinicon River. There’s also his easel and a fringed, green and peach
flowered easy chair with matching footstool, both designed by Wood and sold by
the local furniture vendor Smulekoffs for $52.
Wood resisted suggestions that he move permanently to New York or even
Chicago, where he could make more money, preferring to draw on the inspiration
of his Midwestern roots. After all, this is a man who once said, “All the
really good ideas I’d ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”
For my nieces and I, our final stop was back in Anamosa where Wood — who
died of cancer in 1942, two hours short of his 51st birthday — is buried in
the appropriately hilly, verdant Riverside Cemetery. Look for the family plot
marked by a large stone lion.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Weekend expenses for four:
Lodging [two nights]……….. $190
Meals ……………………. $160
Museum fees ……………….. $32
Gasoline and tolls …………. $50
Total ……………………. $432
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IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Anamosa is about 220 miles from Chicago. Take Interstate Highway 290 to
Interstate Highway 88 to Rock Falls, Ill., then take U.S. Highway 30 to
Fulton. After crossing the Mississippi, take Iowa Highway 136 to U.S. Highway
61 to Maquoketa, then continue west on Iowa Highway 64 (part of the Grant Wood
Scenic Byway) into Anamosa. Cedar Rapids is another 25 miles southwest on U.S.
Highway 151. Travel time is about 4 hours each way.
LODGING
Shaw House, 509 S. Oak St., Anamosa, IA, 52205; 319-462-4485. This
bed-and-breakfast is a lovely home on the National Register of Historic
Places,run by a friendly family with Iowa roots and an appreciation of
regional history. The antique-furnished rooms are mostly third-floor walkups
and may seem a tad claustrophobic with their low ceilings and small windows.
The “ballroom,” with private bath, can sleep a family of four, for $90 per
night plus tax. Other rooms go for as little as $65. My small, but two-story
“tower room” offered an airy study. A generous breakfast is served in the
formal dining room.
DINING
The General Store Pub, 12612 Stone City Road, Anamosa; 319-462-5980. On the
banks of the Wapsipinicon River, this 1897 building has been a quarry office,
a gas station and an art studio. The owners have fulltime jobs and run a
family farm, so it’s often closed. But it will be the center of Stone City
nightlife on June 9, 10 and 11 for this year’s Grant Wood Art Festival. Friday
is open mic, Saturday is karaoke, and Sunday a local band will play. Limited
menu of inexpensive sandwiches and pizza.
Opera House restaurant, 221 W. Main St., Anamosa. This two-story brick
building used to host musical performances and now is home to the kind of
diner you’d expect to find on Main Street in Middle America. Nothing fancy.
North Country Steakhouse, 140 Blairs Ferry Road N.E., Cedar Rapids;
319-378-3970. An excellent “cook your own” steak, pork chops or fish place
with baked potato and salad bars and decadent dessert selections.
ATTRACTIONS
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, 410 3rd Ave. S.E., Cedar Rapids; 319-366-7503;
www.crma.org. World’s largest exhibit of Grant Wood art. Admission: $4 adults,
$3 children and seniors. Closed Mondays and holidays.
The History Center, 615 1st Ave. S.E., Cedar Rapids; 319-362-1501;
www.historycenter.org. Closed Monday. Admission: $4 adults, $2 children 6-17.
Maquoketa Caves State Park, 10970 98th St., 6 miles from Maquoketa;
319-652-5833. Hike through caves, some big enough for paved walkways and
lighting systems and others so small you only can crawl through on your belly.
Picnic facilities and campgrounds available. Other hiking trails go through a
restored prairie, an oak savanna restoration and a wildlife food plot.
Grant Wood Scenic Byway: A circuit marked by road signs that snakes through
Stone City, Anamosa, Wyoming, Monmouth, Baldwin, Maquoketa, Andrew,
Springbrook and Bellevue. A lovely drive if you have time for winding, hilly
roads through small towns and the type of terrain Wood painted.
FESTIVALS
Grant Wood Art Festival, Stone City, 2nd Sunday in June (June 11 in 2000).
From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., it’s a day of juried art exhibits, blacksmith shop and
mine tours, food booths and live music honoring Wood and the heritage of Stone
City’s Irish immigrants. 319-462-4267
INFORMATION
Grant Wood Tourism Center, 124 E. Main St., Anamosa; 319-462-4267. Good
place to pick up brochures and other information, plus some wacky souvenirs.
S.F.