Grant Wood was born in 1891 in Anamosa, Iowa. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1912; and at the Academie Julian in Paris around 1920, and upon his return to Iowa began seriously painting. Wood was part of a group of American artists call the Regionalists who deliberately turned their backs on progressive European art of the 1930’s and its abstract tendencies, choosing instead to depict in realistic style their native Midwestern world and the lives of ordinary people. His crisp, liner style was influenced by early Flemmish painting that he saw when he was in Europe in the 1920’s.