American Gothic House - American Gothic

American Gothic

During the summer of 1930, Edward Rowan, a young gallery director from Cedar Rapids, a large city approximately 80 miles (130 km) to the northeast of Eldon, attempted to promote fine arts in the rural town by opening a gallery and library and leading art classes in Eldon. Rowan's attempts were met with success—the Eldon Forum called the exhibitions "an unusual treat." This, along with an indebtedness Wood felt toward Rowan, drew the painter (himself a native of Anamosa, Iowa) to come to Eldon.

In August, Wood was driven around the town by a young painter from Eldon, John Sharp, looking for inspiration. Sharp's brother suggested in 1973 that it was on this drive that Wood first sketched the house on the back of an envelope. Wood did not immediately regard the house as beautiful, but he did find it captivating. His earliest biographer, Darrell Garwood, noted that Wood "thought it a form of borrowed pretentiousness, a structural absurdity, to put a Gothic-style window in such a flimsy frame house." At the time, Wood classified it as one of the "cardboardy frame houses on Iowa farms" and considered it "very paintable." After obtaining the permission of the Jones family, Wood made a sketch the next day in oil on paperboard from the house's front yard. This sketch displayed a steeper roof and a longer window with a more pronounced ogive than the actual house, features which eventually adorned the final work; however, Wood did not add figures to the sketch until he returned to Cedar Rapids. He would not return to Eldon again before his death in 1942, although he did request a photograph of the home to complete his painting.