Dinner for Threshers

1891–1942

Dinner for Threshers, 1934

Oil on hardboard

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd

As the figures’ outdated clothes suggest, Dinner for Threshers was inspired by Grant Wood’s childhood memories of the annual threshing ritual on his family’s Iowa farm. This important economic and social event involved harvesting the winter wheat or oat crop and then separating the kernels of grain from the straw stalks and seed casings. While men and boys worked in the field, women and girls worked in the kitchen preparing the harvest lunch (“dinner” in the Midwest).

Wood’s cutaway view of an Iowa farmhouse interior recalls early Renaissance paintings depicting the Last Supper of Christ and his apostles. This historical precedent endows the modern farmers with the dignity of biblical disciples participating in a sacred meal. It also enabled Wood to avoid depicting the economic devastation of the Great Depression, which included a prolonged drought and farm failures that ran as high as twenty-five percent in parts of Iowa in the early 1930s.