American Gothic, 1930
Grant Wood
Oil paint, beaverboard · 78 x 65.3 cm
A farmer and his daughter stand stony-faced before a sharp gothic window.
A stern farmer grips his pitchfork beside a woman before their white farmhouse — Grant Wood's 1930 image of Midwestern resolve. Endlessly parodied yet oddly moving, it has become one of the most famous and instantly recognised of all American paintings.
What you're looking at
Wood painted it on Beaver Board, a pressed wood-pulp panel, and worked it as smooth as enamel — there is almost no visible brushwork anywhere. The detail rewards the zoom: the rickrack trim on her apron, the stitched seams of his overalls echoing the three tines of the fork, the snake plant and geraniums on the porch behind them, the cameo brooch at her throat. The pointed upstairs window is Carpenter Gothic, a wooden house borrowing a cathedral's shape, and it is the Gothic the title refers to.
On a Frame TV
Portrait, about 5:6. The clean crop would cut the window that names the painting, so use the matted file. Mid-toned and evenly lit with no deep shadows, which makes it one of the more forgiving works in the collection — it holds up in daylight as well as in a dim room.
Art Institute of Chicago · Visit it in Chicago →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
The couple in American Gothic are not a couple, and the house is real →
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Grant Wood.
