How Much Is Daughters of Revolution Worth?

Conclusion: We place a hypothetical fair market value of $12–25 million on Grant Wood’s Daughters of Revolution (1932) if the Cincinnati Art Museum’s original were ever offered for sale. This estimate is derived by comparable analysis anchored to Wood’s best public benchmarks and adjusted upward for the painting’s exceptional art-historical stature, name recognition, and the extreme scarcity of top-tier Grant Wood oils in private hands [2].

Object and significance: Daughters of Revolution is a canonical, widely reproduced satire within Wood’s oeuvre—central to discussions of American identity, nationalism, and cultural politics between the wars. The Cincinnati Art Museum’s object records and conservation materials affirm authorship, medium, and long institutional stewardship, underscoring the work’s prominence and scholarship/loan history [1][5]. Among Wood’s best-known images after American Gothic, it is a mainstay of American art surveys and would command masterpiece-level attention if available.

Comparables and pricing logic: The clearest hard benchmark for a prime Wood oil remains Spring Plowing (1932), sold at Sotheby’s in 2005 for $6.96 million, a figure widely cited in the press [2]. While no recent public sale exists for a comparably important Wood painting, sustained demand for top imagery is evident in significant works on paper—notably the 2026 result for Study for American Gothic at $584,200 [3], and earlier strong prices such as Study for Dinner for Threshers at $1.565 million in 2014 [6]. Given Daughters of Revolution’s higher fame, its textbook status, and the paucity of blue-chip Wood oils outside museums, a new auction record would be expected. Our $12–25 million corridor reflects an uplift over the historical painting record, scaled to current market conditions and the composition’s outsized cultural resonance.

Category context and demand: The broader American Modern/Regionalist segment continues to show healthy competition for fresh, high-quality works, with headline results and record-setting momentum reported in curated American art sales (e.g., Christie’s 2024 Modern American Art sale totaling $13.29 million and Benton leading at $2.23 million) [4]. In this supply-constrained niche, institutional interest is a key driver; a masterpiece-level Wood—with distinguished provenance and deep literature/exhibition history—would trigger bidding from museums, patrons, and major private collectors of American art.

Positioning and assumptions: This valuation assumes the painting is the museum-held, autograph oil in very good condition, with clean title and comprehensive documentation [1][5]. It reflects fair market value in an open, competitive setting (public auction or brokered private treaty with multiple bidders). The low end ($12 million) aligns with a conservative uplift over the last painting record; the high end ($25 million) recognizes the work’s iconic status within Wood’s oeuvre and the likely intensity of institutional and private demand in a rare opportunity to acquire a textbook Grant Wood [2][3][4].