Skip to Main Content
Home

Title goes here

Alfred Stieglitz, The Barn, 1922, palladium print, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.3.611
1 of 8
From a low vantage point, we look up along rolling, verdant farm fields bathed in sunlight that fill most of this nearly square canvas. Rows of stylized, gold-green hay almost fill landscape painting. The horizon line is high, almost at the top of the painting, and the hill in front of us slopes from the horizon down to a point far below us, at the bottom edge of the canvas. Along the hill, roughly parallel rows of harvested hay are bundled into distinctive tube-like mounds, with paths between them. The field is interrupted only by a small, solitary young tree near the lower left corner. Two muted, terracotta-red barns or outbuildings with pitched, tan-colored roofs perch at the top of the hill. They stand outlined against a light, clear blue sky at the top center of the composition. The canopies of several rounded trees puff up beyond the buildings, on the far side of the hill. A fan-like weathervane with flat, blade-like paddles sits atop the smaller barn. The other, larger building has a higher pitched roof with a small, lantern-shaped cupola on top and a wide door on the right side where the roof slopes down in a lean-to type of structure. A piece of farm machinery is parked in the field at the top right. At the bottom center of the canvas, a brown ceramic jug with a handle and red stopper rests on the ground in between the rows of bundled hay. The artist signed and dated the work with red paint in the bottom left corner: “GRANT WOOD 1939.” There is also a red painted copyright symbol to the left of the name.
Grant Wood, Haying, 1939, oil on canvas on paperboard mounted on hardboard, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Strasburger, 1982.7.1
2 of 8
Charles Sheeler, Side of White Barn, 1917, gelatin silver print, New Century Fund, 1998.19.4
3 of 8
Two cows stand side-by-side to our right with a path leading to a row of buildings in the distance to our left in this dreamlike, stylized landscape painting. The forms are simplified, angular, and blocky, and seem to be overlapping, though most of the shapes painted with blended strokes. To our right, a black cow stands beyond a brown cow, both facing our left in profile. The heads are triangular and come to exaggerated points under curving horns, and the ribs of the cow closer to us are painted with curving black lines down the body. Their legs also taper to exaggeratedly pointed, tiny hooves. A milk jug sits to our right, behind them. The row of five buildings to our left are created with blocks of white, golden yellow, brick red, and black. A sprig of leaves and a lacy white flower grow to our left on the row of oatmeal-brown rocks jutting up along the bottom edge of the composition. An abstracted shirt-like form floats to our left against the background of teal green that covers the bottom two-thirds of the painting. The area above the buildings is painted with a field of silvery charcoal gray. The artist signed and dated the painting with tiny letters under the brown cow:
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Cows in Pasture, 1923, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of George Biddle), 2014.136.94
4 of 8
Florence Arquin, Ammann's Barn, c. 1935, woodcut, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.706
5 of 8
Wright Morris, Model T in front of Barn, near Norfolk, Nebraska, 1947, printed later, gelatin silver print, Gift of Barbara A. Koenig and Stephen E. Arkin in memory of Josephine Morris, 2018.15.126
6 of 8
Dorothy Dehner, The Barn in Bolton, 1952, color etching and aquatint on wove paper, Gift of Jacob Kainen, 2002.98.379
7 of 8
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Farm scene horses and barn), c. 1930, watercolor, graphite, and ink on paper, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc., 1986.43.193
8 of 8