Presidential Underwear and Grant Wood Revisited

Union Suit Fans, yesterday I received this email from R.K. Davenport.... 

Chris: Having grown up on a farm near Iowa City in eastern Iowa, I've been a fan of union suits nearly my whole life and a fan of your blog for a couple years now. My 13 year old son is a 4th generation union suit wearer. He sleeps in either his red union suit or the one with dinosaurs on it. It keeps him warm when playing junior hockey too and other Iowa outdoor activities. 

After reading your latest posting on "Presidential Underwear" from this past August, the one about Abraham Lincoln's museum and his union suit, I went back and looked at your other presidential long underwear postings. 

In 2018, you posted a lithograph, "Midnight Alarm," by artist Grant Wood and then added additional artwork of his sent to you by one of your readers. It was a painting purported to be of President Hoover's "boyhood home" in West Branch, Iowa. The painting was on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

This summer, my wife and I with our 13 year old teenager and his two younger sisters visited West Branch and the Herbert Clark Hoover Library and Museum, his boyhood home which you can tour, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. All are within walking distance. Here are some photos of his little home taken by me:

This is the house where Hoover was born and actually lived as a boy. It looks nothing like the home pictured in the aforementioned painting by Wood displayed at the Whitney. 

You can see his home was comparatively modest compared to the one featured. It is only one story with a couple of bedrooms. And, nowdays, there is no clothesline and certainly no union suit hanging out to dry. 

What house do you suppose Grant Wood was depicting?

...R.K. Davenport

Great detective work, R.K. I found on the internet that President Hoover's home is just as your pictures show. So Grant Wood's painting is someone else's, apparently another family's mid-nineteenth century home. Perhaps he took license to create an addition to Hoover's house in his imagination. I wonder though if an addition was added by a subsequent purchaser and then torn down in the years when the library and boyhood home were established.

Here below are my comments, followed by those from Joe of NYC, regarding Manhattan's Whitney Art Museum's display of Grant Wood's painting in question. It's from my posting of April, 2018 in Union Suit Fan:

...Spencer, I thank you for this insight into Grant Wood's lithograph, “Midnight Alarm,” and for bringing it to my attention. This lithograph is sure to be of interest to Union Suit Fans. I appreciate you taking the time to share. 

Coincidentally, the same week I heard from you, I received an email featuring additional "Union Suit" art by none other than Grant Wood. Although not as prominent as the farmer descending the stairs in his Long Underwear, it never-the-less depicts a Union Suit. In this instance, President Herbert Hoover's Union Suit hangs from a boyhood farm house clothesline. Not surprising, Hoover was from Iowa as was Wood. No doubt, both men wore one-piece, button-down Long Johns. Perhaps Wood did have an interest in men's underwear, why not?

Joe of New York City emailed, “On display today at the Whitney in downtown Manhattan is a Grant Wood exhibit: Best known for AMERICAN GOTHIC, he also painted the above titled “THE BIRTHPLACE OF HERBERT HOOVER, WEST BRANCH, IOWA." 

And why am I sending this? Well, cropped a bit, look at what is on the President’s clothesline!  Keep ‘em buttoned, Joe.”

Yep, sure enough, there is Hoover's Union Suit. Thanks, Joe! ...Chris

You can read all about the presidential Union Suits of John F. Kennedy and Calvin Coolidge in my posting, “Presidential Underwear,” May 26, 2016. In another posting, “Presidential Underwear, Abe Lincoln's Union Suit?” dated July 27, 2016, I discuss the possibility of Lincoln and his sons wearing Union Suits back in the mid-1800's...  

A search of the internet gives us a bit more information regarding the two story house. Here's what I uncovered:

The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover

West Branch, Iowa, 1931 Grant Wood  Oil on masonite

PURCHASED JOINTLY BY THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND THE DES MOINES ART CENTER; WITH FUNDS FROM THE JOHN R. VAN DERLIP FUND, MRS. HOWARD H. FRANK, AND THE EDMUNDSON ART FOUNDATION, Inc.   

On View in Gallery 323

Grant Wood, born and raised in Iowa, was the foremost artist of the American Regionalist movement, which focused on the human condition and the values of a rural environment. This well-organized landscape, with its linear precision and repetition of forms, emphasizes the order and harmony of country life. A group of Iowa businessmen commissioned this painting to present to President Herbert Hoover, who was born in the white frame cabin situated immediately behind the two-story house in the middle of the scene. The president, who had stressed his humble origins during his campaign, refused the painting because the inclusion of the larger, later house obscured the cabin. Wood eventually sold it through a dealer.

If Joe, or anyone else, can shed any light on the diffences, please let me know.

...Chris