成年を迎えるアーノルド

Grant Wood painted this in 1930, the same year he made American Gothic and became, almost overnight, the face of a homegrown Midwestern art that turned away from Europe. But this picture is a private one. It is a birthday portrait of his young studio assistant, Arnold Pyle, made for the boy's 21st birthday, the coming of age in the title. Pyle stands calm and clear-eyed against rolling Iowa fields, while behind him, small in the distance, two nude young men bathe in a river, a quiet nod to the Italian Renaissance painting Wood loved. Wood signed his own name down by Pyle's belt buckle, right beside the initials A.P., so that the two names would stay linked on the canvas for good.