Landscape
GRANT WOOD (1891–1942)
Study No. 1, Fall Plowing, 1931
Charcoal and pencil on paper, 10 3/4 x 14 in.
Signed, dated, and inscribed (at lower right): GRANT WOOD 1931; (on the back, at lower left): Study No. 1 / Fall Plowing / Grant Wood [cursive] – 1931
EX COLL.: private collections until 2023
The present drawing is a study for Fall Plowing (The John Deere Collection, Moline, Illinois). In its final oil-on-canvas iteration, the painting is one of Grant Wood’s early and important oil paintings. Fall Plowing, a rural landscape with a John Deere self-scouring steel plow sitting mid-furrow, abandoned by its horse and farmer and, at the bottom center foreground of the canvas, positioned to attract the immediate attention of the viewer. An oil on Masonite sketch for Fall Plowing, without the plow, is in the collection of the Figge Art Museum (formerly Davenport Art Museum), Davenport, Iowa.
The present drawing partakes of the atmosphere of magic realism. This is a farm without people. The plow, by 1932 a relic of earlier days, seems to have been abandoned in the middle of its task. However, the picture, carefully composed and deliberately detailed, does not attempt to replicate reality. Wood’s trees are schematized; his piles of wheat are conical soldiers mustered in geometric precision on a field. A set of farm buildings suggesting human presence is tiny and barely visible in the distance. There is no sign of movement of any sort. The drawing, though very close to the final oil version, differs in minor detail, suggesting Wood’s ongoing creative process.
