High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wood`s inspiration came from a cottage designed in the Gothic Revival style with a distinctive upper window and a decision to paint the house along with "the kind of people I fancied should live in that house." The painting shows a farmer standing beside his spinster daughter. The figures were modeled by the artist`s dentist and sister. The woman is dressed in a colonial print apron mimicking 19th century Americana and the couple are in the traditional roles of men and women, the man`s pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and the flowers over the woman`s right shoulder suggesting domesticity.