Artist: Grant Wood (American, 1891-1942)
Title: January
Date: 1937
Accession #: 99.12.03
Medium: Lithograph on paper
Dimensions: frame: 20 1/8 x 24 1/8 in., sheet: 9 x 11 3/4 in.
Gift of: Dr. Randall Lengeling
About the Artist: January is one in a series of ten lithographs where Wood traced rural life through the seasons. None of the scenes are what might truly be termed pure landscapes, for all include humans or else the marks that humans have made upon the land. Every country scene is a cultivated landscape, with the fertile Iowa land bearing evidence of its production either of crops or livestock. Produced during the last years of the Depression, just before the outbreak of World War II, January and the other nine lithographs have not the slightest hint of the struggles Iowa farm families had endured during the hard times. The productivity of the land has not slackened nor have the farmers lost their farms or their confidence. Though some critics have faulted Wood for not recording the realities of the rural economic crisis of the Depression, others have felt that he intentionally sidestepped those kinds of scenes to focus on optimism for the future and faith in the enduring beauty and fertility of the land itself.