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
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.
