Daughters of Revolution

Grant Wood

Oil on Masonite

Cincinnati Art Museum

Grant Wood's 'Daughters of Revolution' is a razor-sharp satirical portrait depicting three prim, self-satisfied elderly women holding teacups, posed before Emanuel Leutze's heroic painting 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' — a backdrop that pointedly contrasts the grandeur of the founding era with the smug complacency of its self-appointed guardians. Painted in Wood's signature Regionalist style with hard-edged, meticulous realism inspired by 15th-century Flemish and German masters, the composition drips with irony. Grant Wood (1891–1942), an Iowa-born titan of American Regionalism and creator of the iconic 'American Gothic,' was one of the most celebrated painters of rural American life, known for his stylized, subtly humorous portrayals of Midwestern people and landscapes. This singular work — the only painting Wood himself ever called a satire — is a masterclass in visual wit, making it a conversation-starting statement piece that captures a defining tension in American identity: the gap between revolutionary ideals and the human tendency toward exclusion and self-importance.