Grandma Moses

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Grandma Moses (1953)

Cornell Capa's portrait of Grandma Moses on her 100th Birthday

Anna Mary Moses - better known as Grandma Moses -- (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961) was a renowned American folk artist. She is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age.

1 Biography
2 Painting
3 Legacy
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Grandma Moses was born Anna Mary Robertson on September 7, 1860 in Greenwich, New York. As a child, she used fruit juice to paint on pieces of wood or materials that her father brought home for her. He brought the other children candy, but she preferred to purchase drawing supplies because they "lasted longer than candy".

She married Thomas Solomon Moses in 1887 and they lived in the Shenandoah Valley before settling in Eagle Bridge, New York. She spent most of her life as a farmer's wife and the mother of five children.

She died at Hoosick Falls on December 13, 1961, outliving most of her children, and is buried at the Maple Grove Cemetery. Her gravestone is inscribed with this epitaph: "Her primitive paintings captured the spirit and preserved the scene of a vanishing countryside."

[edit] Painting

Moses began painting in her 70s after abandoning a career in embroidery because of arthritis. Louis J. Caldor, a collector discovered her paintings in a Hoosick Falls drugstore window in 1938. In 1939 an art dealer Otto Kallir exhibited some of her work in his Galerie Saint-Etienne in New York. This brought her to the attention of art collectors all over the world, and her paintings were highly sought after. She went on to exhibit her work throughout Europe and in Japan, where her work was particularly well received. She continued her prolific output of paintings, the demand for which never diminished during her lifetime.

Grandma Moses painted mostly scenes of rural life. Some of her many paintings were used on the covers of Hallmark cards.

In 1946 her painting The Old Checkered Inn in Summer was featured in the background of a national advertising campaign for the young women's lip gloss PRIMITIVE RED by Du Barry cosmetics.

President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club Award Award for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949, and in 1951 she appeared on See It Now, a television program hosted by Edward R. Murrow. In 1952 she published her autobiography entitled Grandma Moses: My Life's History.

She celebrated her 100th birthday on September 7, 1960, and for the occasion Life magazine commissioned Cornell Capa photograph her for the cover of the magazine. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller also proclaimed the day "Grandma Moses Day" in her honor.

[edit] Legacy

A 1942 piece titled The Old Checkered House, 1862 was appraised at the Memphis 2004 Antiques Roadshow. The painting was a summer scene, not as common as her winter landscapes. Originally purchased in the 1940s for $110, appraiser Alan Fausel assigned the piece an insurance value of $60,000.