Walk: Asian Art Museum Distance: 6 miles  |
| Grant Wood (1891-1942), Dinner for Treshers, 1934, oil on board, de Young Museum, San Francisco |
America was a nation of small farmers (and shop keepers) and Ciwt loves how this painting captures some of them having their big meal in the middle of the day. The work is tricky to present because it is long, narrow, and meticulously (one could almost say obsessively) detailed. In the enlargement you can (barely) see the 'farmer's tan' - tan on their lower faces and near white above where their caps have covered their foreheads during long hours in the sun. Hopefully you might get to our de Young Museum to see all the other details that are so telling about their routines and relationships.
Her midwest family weren't farmers, but there were many farms nearby and visible from the the highway. Likewise her Connecticut home and schools weren't in farm country, but the tobacco tobacco fields and sheds covered much of the ground near the airport. Interesting the things we absorb without realizing it in our childhoods.
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