Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942). Indian Creek, Midsummer, 1928. Oil on board. 13 x 15 inches (33.0 ...

Description

Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942)
Indian Creek, Midsummer, 1928
Oil on board
13 x 15 inches (33.0 x 38.1 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Grant Wood / 1928
Titled and inscribed on the reverse: Indian Creek / Dr. & Mrs. A.W. Erskine
Bears inscription on the frame: G Wood

PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Dr. Arthur "Arty" Wright Erskine, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, acquired from the above, 1928;
Mrs. Betsy Erskine, by descent, 1952;
Private collection, 1972;
Eckert & Ross Fine Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2010;
Private collection, Indiana, acquired from the above.

EXHIBITED:
Duluth Public Library, Duluth, Minnesota, "Exhibition of Paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin D. Cone," September-October 1928;
The Lakeside Press Galleries, Chicago, Illinois, "Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Grant Wood," February-March 1935, no. 25 (as Midsummer, 1928, Dr. Arthur Erskine).

LITERATURE:
P. Rinard and A Pyle, Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by Grant Wood, Chicago, Illinois, 1935, n.p., no. 25 (as Midsummer);
D. Garwood, "Important Paintings by Grant Wood," Artist in Iowa-A Life of Grant Wood, New York, 1944, pp. 94, 252;
H.E. Brown, Grant Wood and Marvin Cone: Artists of an Era, Ames, Iowa,1972, p. 7;
J. Dennis, Grant Wood: A Study in American Art and Culture, New York, 1975, p. 35, fig. 23, illustrated;
J.S. Czestochowski, Marvin D. Cone and Grant Wood-An American Tradition, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1989, p. 210, no. 8, "Oil Sketches by Grant Wood," 2010, n.p., no. 11, www.catrais.org.

This work will be included in Joseph S. Czestochowski's catalogue raisonné of the artist's work to be published by International Arts® at www.catrais.org. We wish to thank him for his assistance cataloguing this work.

After brief studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Grant Wood, in 1916, returned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to aid his mother Hattie Weaver Wood (1858-1935) by helping build a modest house on a bluff overlooking the Indian Creek countryside. Concurrently, his mother became the patient of a Dr. Arthur W. Erskine, who would become a prominent physician, a pioneer of medical radiology, an important lifelong friend of Grant Wood, and an arts advocate within the Iowa community ("Arthur W. Erskine, M.D., In Memoriam," Radiology, vol. 60, no. 2, February 1, 1953, p. 253).

Indian Creek would become an impactful source of inspiration for Wood's earliest landscape paintings, embracing a Post-Impressionist style popularized in the 1920s by the influential artists of the Indiana Hoosier School. Indian Creek, Midsummer (1928) is distinguished by a continued, vigorous palette knife application of paint, a technique which started in 1927 by sketching on panels out-of-doors, in direct contrast to his very design-oriented painting style that brought him instant celebrity. In November 1930, at age 39, Wood exhibited his American Gothic at the Art Institute of Chicago. Surprisingly, Wood reverted to this painting style in 1933, and then consistently between 1939 and 1941.

Dr. Erskine was a nationally distinguished cancer radiologist, who when Wood became ill in 1941 while living in Iowa City, helped him secure care for his pancreatic cancer. Grant Wood's 1941 lithograph Family Doctor, developed from his 1936-37 drawing General Practitioner for the Limited Editions Club publication of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, was in large part a tribute to this enduring friendship, and that of his Iowa City physician, Andrew William Bennett (1890-1953), before his death on February 12, 1942.

The present work retains its original contemporary frame handcrafted by the artist.

© Joseph S. Czestochowski


More information about Grant Wood. See also: Wood, Grant, Grant DeVolson Wood, Wood, Grant DeVolson Artist.

Estimate: $10,000 - $15,000.

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