Corn being so important to Americans, it is hardly surprising that it turns up so often in our art. Indeed, the Tulsa artist, Alfred Montgomery, whose painting opens this story, seems to have painted little else but corn—in baskets, in sacks, on a floor, arranged on a barn door. An admirer claimed that Montgomery painted corn so perfectly that “horses try to devour it, hens even peck at his canvasses.”

Although Montgomery was unique in his zealotry, many other artists also found corn—from spring planting through summer ripening to autumn harvest—an attractive subject, as the following portfolio of paintings suggests.