American Gothic ☰ Grant Wood ☷ Canvas moon

American Gothic ☰ Grant Wood ☷ Canvas moonAmerican Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood is one of the most famous American paintings of the 20th century. Wood was inspired to paint the house in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting's name is a word play on Carpenter Gothic, the house's architectural style. It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter often mistaken to be his wife with the symmetry of the two mimicking the shape of the unique

green and blue background absent of any detail

appears to be incorrect

The Outlier (1909) by Frederic Remington is one of the last works he completed before his death in 1909

as the branches float against a blue sky

The character may be the ghost of the wife of Kohada Koheiji in the play Eiri otogi zoshi

with tall masts and chimneys silhouetted against the sky

and displayed at the Galerie Belvedere in Vienna until it was returned in 2006 to one of Ferdinand's nieces

balancing realism with decorative elements

But armed conflicts continued into the 1920s

or perhaps as the large uprooted tree standing as a third figure in the moonlight

first developed in the 1860s out of his interest in Asian art

with two small rowboats in the foreground against a misty background of clipper ships