print
- Museum number
- 2004,0331.10
- Title
- Object: Sultry Night
- Description
-
Naked man using a bucket to pour water from a metal water-trough over himself under a tree, another tree in the distance. 1939
Lithograph
- Production date
- 1939
- Dimensions
-
Height: 230 millimetres
-
Width: 299 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Stephen Coppel, 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', with the assistance of Jerzy Kierkuc-Bielinski, BMP, 2008, no. 65.
This lithograph of a naked farmer cooling off after a long day's work reflects Wood's vision of the Midwest pioneers bound to the prairies. Wood described how their character had been formed by the land:
Finding no woodlands or deep valleys to shelter them, they had to learn a special intimacy with the soil. They had to adapt themselves to the vast openness of the prairie and the ubiquitous light of an unbroken sky. And they ... developed a character ... akin to that of the land itself... I saw it in the eyes of my father and mother - a quality bleak, far-away, timeless - the severe but generous vision of the midwest pioneer (Grant Wood's unfinished memoir 'Return from Bohemia, A Painter's Life'; cited in Corn, p. 3).
To evoke the sultry heat of the night, Wood carefully stroked the lithographic crayon on to the stone, creating a soft, silvery tone. By showing the male figure naked, Wood also imbued the farmer with a primal quality akin to the first man. However, in the eyes of the US Post Office authorities the subject was obscene, and Associated American Artists, whose print distribution depended on the mail, was forced to remove this print from sale. Only 100 of the planned edition of 250 were ever printed as a result.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2008 April-Sep, BM, The American Scene, cat. no.65
2009 Feb-April, Nottingham, Djanogly AG, The American Scene
2009 May-Aug, Brighton Museum & AG, The American Scene
2009 Sep-Dec, Manchester, Whitworth AG, The American Scene
- Acquisition date
- 2004
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2004,0331.10