Parson Weems’ Fable

Grant Wood was a talented artist, but if he were alive today, he might be a cartoonist. He never considered art to be too important for a laugh. His 1939 painting Parson Weems’ Fable depicted Mason Locke Weems, who was the first to publish, in 1800, the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. "It is too valuable to be lost, and too true to be doubted..." The subject of the painting is not so much Washington, or his father, or even the slaves working in the background, but Weems telling the tale. The story he points to doesn't have to be accurate, or even believable. It just has to be a good story.