Grant Wood

Grant Wood created the Sultry Night print circa 1937 in Iowa for Associated American Artists, a Depression-era enterprise that sold original prints by American artists to a subscription-based group of collectors around the United States. In a desciption of Wood's work, he explained that the moonlit bathing scene was inspired by memories of farmlands he growing up during the 1890s. Instead of following those same ideas for his painting, the model was most likely his University of Iowa colleague Eric Knight, who lived with Wood in the summers. Surely enough, according to Wood scholar Tripp Evans, the title of Sultry Night was a pun off of Eric Knight's last name.

In 1937, Wood unveiled Sultry Night's oil version, followed by the lithograph's appearance in the Associated American Artists catalogue later that year.

Sources:

Evans, R Tripp. Grant Wood: a life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.