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Dimensions: 18 by 34 in.
(45.7 by 86.4 cm)
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Provenance: The artist
A wedding gift to his daughter and son-in-law, 1947
By descent to Marvin Cone's grandchildren
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Exhibited: Omaha, Nebraska, Nebraska Art Association, Morrill Hall, Fiftieth Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, February-March 1940, no.12 (as Cook's Barn) Washington D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Seventeenth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Oil Painting, March-May 1941, no.161 (as Cook's Barn) Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City Art Institute, Midwestern Artisit's Exhibition, March 1942, no.24
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Stewart Memorial Art Library, Coe College, Paintings of Marvin D. Cone, October-November 1942, no. 6 Toledo, Ohio, Toledo Museum of Art, Thirty First Annual Exhibition of Selected American Paintings, June-August 1944 (as Cook's Red Barn) Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Coe College, Coe College Commencement, May-June 1945, no.12, (as Cook's Barn)
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Literature: Joseph S. Czestochowski, Marvin D. Cone: Art as Self Portrait, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1989, no. 396, illustrated pg. 128
Joseph S. Czestochowski, Marvin D. Cone and Grant Wood: An American Tradition, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1990, p. 122
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Notes: Though Marvin Cone's work is often described as Regionalist in the tradition of midwestern landscape artists, such as his lifelong friend Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, Cone avoided the political and cultural implications often found in the work of his contemporaries and focused instead on the abstract psychological ideas behind his subject matter. He painted from life, but it was the essence, rather than the reality, of the landscape that captivated him.
Cone spent his entire life as an artist in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he grew up, raised a family and taught painting at the local Coe College for over forty years. Joseph S. Czestochowski writes, "...Cone concentrated on the landscape of the Midwest, capturing the special nuances of mid-western light and the complex formations of land and sky. These scenes, which rarely include people, are reminiscent of the Iowa countryside, but without topographic precision. To the artist, the landscape had a poignant reality that was nonetheless unpredictable and elusive. Nature's sublimity, greater than its mere physical qualities, was Cone's principal pursuit" (Marvin D. Cone: An American Tradition, New York, 1985, p. 1).
