1891-1942 Grant Wood Locations His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) , Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in 1910, and returned a year later to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and did some work as a silversmith. From 1920 to 1928 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially impressionism and post-impressionism. But it was the work of Jan Van Eyck that influenced him to take on the clarity of this new technique and to incorporate it in his new works. From 1924 to 1935 Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up himself). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the topic. Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa's School of Art beginning in 1934. During that time, he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the University's cultural community. On February 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday, Wood died at the university hospital of liver cancer. When Wood died, his estate went to his sister, Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic. When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Wood's personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he worked in a large number of media, including ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects. Throughout his life he hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income. This included painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed decor (including chandelier) for the dining room of a hotel. In addition, his 1928 trip to Munich was to oversee the making of the stained-glass windows he had designed for a Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. He again returned to Cedar Rapids to teach Junior High students after serving in the army as a camouflage painter.  Related Paintings of Grant Wood :. | American Gothic | Break ground | The Bay of Naples-s View | Landscape | Fruit |
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John William Casilear
(June 25, 1811 - August 17, 1893) was an American landscape artist belonging to the Hudson River School. Casilear was born in New York City. His first professional training was under prominent New York engraver Peter Maverick in the 1820s, then with Asher Durand, himself an engraver at the time. Casilear and Durand became friends, and both worked as engravers in New York through the 1830s. By the middle 1830s Durand had become interested in landscape painting through his friendship with Thomas Cole. Durand, in turn, drew Casilear's attention to painting. By 1840 Casilear's interest in art was sufficiently strong to accompany Durand, John Frederick Kensett, and artist Thomas P. Rossiter on a European trip during which they sketched scenes, visited art museums, and fostered their interest in painting. Casilear gradually developed his talent in landscape art, painting in the style that was later to become known as the Hudson River School. By the middle 1850s he had entirely ceased his engraving career in favor of painting full-time. He was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1851, having been an associate member since 1831, and exhibited his works there for over fifty years. Casilear died in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1893.
Thomas Mann Baynes
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Matthaus Gunther
the most prolific fresco painter of the eight- eenth century in central Europe. German, 1705-1788 He was an important German painter and artist of the Baroque and Rococo era. Gunther helped develop the rococo style of painting in Bavaria and Tyrol, working on over 40 churches. His known work includes about 70 frescoes and 25 panels. In particular, he was known for his life-like imagery and lively coloring. Gunther studied in Munich from 1723 to 1728 with Cosmas Damian Asam, the older of the two Asam brothers, and perfected his fresco painting in Augsburg. He frequently worked with some of the greatest artists of his time, including the architect Johann Michael Fischer and the plasterer Johann Michael Feuchtmayer and his brother Franz Xaver.