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 :. | some of corn | February | Fabrication | A short break from pasture work | Self-Portrait |
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Richard Jennys
American 18th
Pagani, Gregorio
Italian, 1558-1605 Italian painter. He trained in the studio of the Late Mannerist Maso da San Friano, but then studied with the more progressive Santi di Tito. There he became friends with Ludovico Cigoli: the two artists, who desired to renew the art of painting, studied from nature and developed an interest in Venetian and Emilian art. Pagani was deeply influenced by Correggio. His earliest surviving works include the frescoes of the Confirmation of the Rule of St Dominic (c. 1580; Florence, S Maria Novella, Chiostro Grande) and the Meeting between SS Dominic and Francis (Florence, Convento dei Cappuccini di Monturghi). In 1592 he painted the Virgin and Saints (St Petersburg, Hermitage), a work that already reveals his interest in Correggio. In the same year he painted a Finding of the True Cross (untraced), a daring composition that is preserved in preparatory drawings. A number of works from the 1590s survive and show Pagani's interest in Emilian art; the Crucifixion and Saints (1595; Florence, S Bartolomeo in Pozzo) and the Virgin and Child with SS Michael the Archangel and Benedict (1595; Florence, S Michele Arcangelo Le Ville). At the turn of the century Pagani was increasingly associated with those Florentine artists who wished to develop a new narrative clarity and directness. His pictures (e.g. Pyramus and Thisbe; Florence, Uffizi) show figures carefully posed with varied expressions and gestures. In the early 17th century Pagani became yet more attracted by naturalism, as in the St Lawrence (1600) in the basilica of the Madonna delle Grazie at San Giovanni, Valdarno. Through his friendship with Bartolomeo Carducho he was influenced by Spanish art, as is evident in the Adoration of the Magi
Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps
(March 3, 1803 - August 22, 1860) was a French painter. He was born in Paris. In his youth he travelled in the East, and reproduced Oriental life and scenery with a bold fidelity to nature that puzzled conventional critics. His powers, however, soon came to be recognized, and he was ranked along with Delacroix and Vernet as one of the leaders of the French school. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received the grand or council medal. Most of his life was passed in the neighborhood of Paris. He was fond of animals, especially dogs, and indulged in all kinds of field sports. He died in 1860 in consequence of being thrown from a horse while hunting at Fontainebleau. Decamps' style was characteristically and intensely French. It was marked by vivid dramatic conception, bold and even rough brushstrokes, and startling contrasts of color and of light and shade. His subjects embraced an unusually wide range. He availed himself of his travels in the East in dealing with scenes from Scripture history, which he was probably the first of European painters to represent with their true and natural local background. Of this class were his Joseph sold by his Brethren, Moses taken from the Nile, and his scenes from the life of Samson, nine vigorous sketches in charcoal and white. Perhaps the most impressive of his historical pictures is Defeat of the Cimbri, representing the conflict between a horde of barbarians and a disciplined army. Decamps produced a number of genre pictures, chiefly scenes from French and Algerian domestic life, the most marked feature of which is humour. The same characteristic attaches to many of his numerous animal paintings; Decamps was especially fond of painting monkeys. His well-known painting The Monkey Connoisseurs satirizes the jury of the French Academy of Painting, which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard.