Reproduction hand painted of the painting
Stone City (Wood)

“Stone City” (1930) is arguably Grant Wood’s first great regionalist landscape, the foundational work where his highly distinctive style fully asserts itself. Inspired by a very real village in Iowa, a former prosperous limestone quarry town, the painting offers an idealized and luminous vision. The valley gently undulates with hills covered in cultivated fields in impeccable rows and round trees resembling hot air balloons or plant moss. The winding river, the blue metal bridge, and the architecture of the buildings, from the abandoned quarry to the church, create perfect visual balance. Wood did not seek photographic realism, but rather a poetic and ordered reconstitution of rurality, tinged with nostalgia. The soft colors, beiges, tender greens, and blues, give this panorama a timeless and soothing atmosphere.