Grandma Moses | artnet Grandma Moses × Biography Grandma Moses was an American artist known for her pastoral landscape paintings. Part of the American folk art tradition, Moses took to painting her scenes of rural life late in her life, similarly to self-taught painter Horace Pippin . Having took up painting after needlework became too cumbersome, her canvases were imbued with a realistic style and unique sense of perspective. Born Anna Mary Robertson on September 7, 1860 in Greenwich, NY, she was in her 70s when art collector Louis Caldor happened to see her work in a shop window on a visit upstate. Three of her paintings were then included in the Contemporary Unknown American Painters exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1939, which began Moses’s meteoric rise in the art world. She died on December 13, 1961 in Hoosick Falls, NY at the age of 101.

Related Categories 1000+ images about Grandma Moses' art on Pinterest | Grandma moses, Naive and Sugaring Grandma Moses, Untitled (House and Barn in Landscape), 1940 See More Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum Why is this image so small? This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright . The Brooklyn Museum respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (American, 1860-1961). Early Skating, 1951. Oil and tempera on Masonite, 17 15/16 x 24 in. (45.6 x 61 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Estate of R. Thornton Wilson, 83.122.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 83.122.2_SL1.jpg) Download our app and ask your own questions during your visit. Here are some that others have asked. What about this one? Is this the original frame? And what are these men carrying?! It may be a sled, if I had to guess.

Though the artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses located this work in her hometown of Greenwich, New York, she did not paint this from observation like the Francis Guy scene. Interestingly, Moses did not start painting until relatively late in her life at age 78, when arthritis rendered her unable to embroider, friends suggested she try painting these scenes instead. Moses worked with whatever materials were at hand, using house paint and leftover canvas or fireboard for her first paintings. Moses was entirely self trained. The frame is likely of the period but our records do not indicate if it is original. Thanks! Anna Mary Robertson Moses American Art Anna Mary Robertson Moses—better known as Grandma Moses—began painting in her late seventies, after decades of working on a farm. Early Skating is one of more than 1,500 of her paintings that depict the seasonal activities and landscape of her rural community in upstate New York. As is characteristic of the artist’s distinctive style, the action is concentrated in the lower half of the composition, and the figures are described in flat, reductive shapes with minimal details.

MEDIUM Oil and tempera on Masonite DATES 1951 DIMENSIONS 17 15/16 x 24 in. (45.6 x 61 cm) Frame: 26 1/2 x 32 1/2 x 2 1/2 in. (67.3 x 82.6 x 6.4 cm) (show scale) SIGNATURE Signed bottom center: "MOSES." INSCRIPTIONS Inscribed verso, upper center, on paper label: "Sept 21, 1951, / 1493, / Early Skating" MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view EXHIBITIONS RIGHTS STATEMENT © 1973 (renewed 2001) Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York Copyright for this work may be controlled by the artist, the artist's estate, or other rights holders. A more detailed analysis of its rights history may, however, place it in the public domain. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties.

It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress , Cornell University , Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums , and Copyright Watch . For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright . If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org . If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can. CAPTION Anna Mary Robertson Moses (American, 1860-1961). Early Skating, 1951. Oil and tempera on Masonite, 17 15/16 x 24 in. (45.6 x 61 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Estate of R. Thornton Wilson, 83.122.2.

© artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 83.122.2_SL1.jpg) IMAGE overall, 83.122.2_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph "CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object. RECORD COMPLETENESS Best (84%) Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have. Download our app and ask your own questions during your visit. Here are some that others have asked. What about this one? Is this the original frame? And what are these men carrying?! It may be a sled, if I had to guess. Though the artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses located this work in her hometown of Greenwich, New York, she did not paint this from observation like the Francis Guy scene.

Interestingly, Moses did not start painting until relatively late in her life at age 78, when arthritis rendered her unable to embroider, friends suggested she try painting these scenes instead. Moses worked with whatever materials were at hand, using house paint and leftover canvas or fireboard for her first paintings. Moses was entirely self trained. The frame is likely of the period but our records do not indicate if it is original. Thanks! Grandma Moses Is Dead at 101; Primitive Artist 'Just Wore Out' Grandma Moses Is Dead at 101; Primitive Artist 'Just Wore Out' Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES HOOSICK FALLS, N. Y., Dec. 13--Grandma Moses, the spry, indomitable "genuine American primitive" who became one of the country's most famous painters in her late seventies, died here today at the age of 101. She died at the Hoosick Falls Health Center, where she had been a patient since August, after a fall at her home in nearby Eagle Bridge. Her physician, Dr. Clayton E.

Shaw, said she had died of hardening of the arteries, but the best way to describe the cause of death, he suggested, was to say "she just wore out." The simple realism, nostalgic atmosphere and luminous color with which Grandma Moses portrayed homely farm life and rural countryside won her a wide following. She was able to capture the excitement of winter's first snow, Thanksgiving preparations and the new, young green of oncoming spring. Gay color, action and humor enlivened her portrayals of such simple farm activities as maple sugaring, soap-making, candle-making, haying, berrying and the making of apple butter. In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went. A tiny, lively woman with mischievous gray eyes and a quick wit, she could be sharp-tongued with a sycophant and stern with an errant grandchild. Cheerful, as a cricket, even in her last years, she continued to be keenly observant of all that went on around her. Until her last birthday, Sept. 7, she rarely failed to do a little painting every day. Grandma Moses is survived by her daughter-in-law, Mrs.

Dorothy Moses; nine grandchildren and more than thirty great-grandchildren. A funeral service will be held Saturday at 2 P. M. from the painter's home. Burial will be in the Maple Grove Cemetery here. Crippled by Arthritis Grandma Moses, whose paintings hang in nine museums in the United States and in Vienna and Paris, turned out her first picture when she was 76 years old. She took up painting because arthritis had crippled her hands so that she no longer could embroider. She could not hold a needle, but she could hold a brush, and she had been too busy all her life to bear the thought of being idle. Two years later a New York engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor, who was driving through Hoosick Falls saw some of her paintings displayed in a drug store. They were priced from $3 to $5, depending on size. He bought them all, drove to the artist's home at Eagle Bridge and bought ten others she had there. The next year, 1939, Grandma Moses was represented in an exhibition of "contemporary unknown painters" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She did not remain unknown for long.

A one-man show of her paintings was held in New York in 1940, and other one-man shows abroad followed. Her paintings were soon reproduced on Christmas cards, tiles and fabrics here and abroad. She was the guest of President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman in 1949 at a tea at which the President played the piano for her. Honored by Governor Governor Rockefeller proclaimed the painter's 100th and 101st birthdays "Grandma Moses Days" throughout the state, declaring this year that "there is no more renowned artist in our entire country today." Yesterday the Governor said, "she painted for the sheer love of painting, and throughout her 101 years she was endeared to all who had the privilege of knowing her." But to say that she was an American painter was less than the full portrait of Grandma Moses; European critics called her work "lovable," "fresh," "charming," "adorable" and "full of naive and childlike joy." A German fan offered his explanation for her wide popularity: "There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good.

You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses." As a self-taught "primitive," who in childhood began painting what she called "lambscapes" by squeezing out grape juice or lemon juice to get colors, Grandma Moses has been compared to the great self-taught French painter, Henri Rousseau, as well as to Breughel. Until the comparisons were made, she had never heard of either artist. Painted from Remembrance Grandma Moses did all of her painting from remembrance of things past. She liked to sit quietly and think, she once said, and remember and imagine. "Then I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live." She would sit on an old, battered swivel chair, perching on two large pillows. The Masonite on which she painted would lie flat on an old kitchen table before her. There was no easel. Crowding her in her "studio" were an electric washer and dryer that had overflowed from the kitchen.

For subject matter, Grandma Moses drew on memories of a long life as farm child, hired girl and farmer's wife. Her first paintings had been sent to the county fair along with samples of her raspberry jam and strawberry preserves. Her jam had won a ribbon, but nobody noticed those first paintings. She would paint for five or six hours, and preferred the first part of the session because, as she said, her hand was fresher and "stiddier." At night, after dinner, she liked to watch television Westerns, not for the drama but because she liked to see horses. Grandma Moses, who was born before Abraham Lincoln had yet taken office, spent a lot of her time on what she called her "old-timey" New England landscapes. She painted from the top down: "First the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the trees, then the houses, then the cattle and then the people." Her tiny figures, disproportionately small, cast no shadows. They seem sharply arrested in action. She learned as a child to observe nature when her father took the children out for walks. He was a Methodist, but never went to church, and he allowed his children to believe what they wanted.

Instead of going to church, they went for long walks in the woods. Grandma Moses had had a hard life most of her many years, but neither her fame nor her advanced years cut into her formidable production. During her lifetime she painted more than 1,000 pictures, twenty-five of them after she had passed her 100th birthday. Her oils have increased in value from those early $3 and $5 works to $8,000 or $10,000 for a large picture. Otto Kallier, owner and director of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York and president of Grandma Moses' Properties, Inc., will not discuss her earnings, but they are reliably estimated to have reached nearly $500,000. Two one-man shows of Grandma Moses' work toured Europe, each for two years, and a third tour abroad is scheduled in 1962-63. "Grandma Moses Story Book," an anthology for children illustrated by forty-seven color reproductions of her paintings, was published this year by Random House, and 20,000 copies were sold before publication.

Grandma Moses, the former Anna Mary Robertson was born at Greenwich, N. Y., in 1860, one of five daughters and five sons of Russell King Robertson and the former Margaret Shannahan. What little formal education she had was obtained in a one-room country school. At the age of 12 she left home to work as a hired girl. She worked in the same capacity until she was 27 years old, when she was married to Thomas Salmon Moses. He was the hired man on the farm where she was doing the housework. Invested in Farm The couple took a wedding trip to North Carolina. On the way back, they decided to invest their $600 savings in the rental of a farm near Staunton, Va. They remained in Virginia for twenty years. Ten children, five of whom died in infancy, were born to them. In addition to caring for the children and running the house, Mrs. Moses made butter and potato chips, which she sold to neighbors. The couple returned to New York State and began farming at Eagle Bridge. Mr. Moses died there in 1927. For several years his widow continued to operate the farm with the help of her son, Forrest.

But she had to give up farm chores, and then embroidery, when arthritis attacked her hands. She had been embroidering in wool pictures that were reminiscent of Currier and Ives prints of country scenes. Grandma Moses' first paintings were copies from the prints and post cards. Gradually, however, she began to compose original scenes, drawn from her memories of farm life in past generations. For her work, the painter received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949 and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry, Philadelphia, in 1951. Late in life she became a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Society of Mayflower Descendants after the local chapters had traced her ancestry and invited her to join. "My Life's History," her autobiography, was published in 1951 by Harper & Brothers. "Grandma Moses, American Primitive," a biography written by Mr. Kallir, was published in 1947 by Doubleday & Co. It was in "My Life's History" that Grandma Moses expressed her basic philosophy: "I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it.

I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be." Kennedy Pays Tribune WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (AP)--President Kennedy paid the following tribute today to Grandma Moses: "The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss." The Legend of Grandma Moses - This Is Vermont The Legend of Grandma Moses Stories The Bennington Museum is home to the largest public collection of paintings by Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961). Better known as Grandma Moses, the artist was catapulted to international fame during the 1940s as the result of her charming, naïvely executed, yet animated paintings of rural America. Her work is a combination of fact-based history and her own memories. As with many of her paintings, The Battle of Bennington depicts a historic event created in the artist’s unique visual style and personal associations.

Fought only a few miles from where the artist lived most of her life, the Revolutionary War battle was an event of significant local lore. Moses blended her own artistic touch with facts, so it was not surprising when asked in an interview why the Bennington Battle Monument was in this painting even though it wasn’t built for more than a century after the battle, her response was, “Well, I put the monument in because it looked good, I guess.” Growing up in rural, upstate New York, in a family that embraced the arts, Moses was surrounded by the decorative, stylized work of self-taught and amateur artists and “popular” art, such as the prints of Currier and Ives. Moses’ own work springs directly from these popular, centuries-old traditions. Popular printed sources served as inspiration for self-taught artists for centuries, and Moses was no exception. It was also common among folk artists of all periods to share their artistic talents with family members and pass along their gift to younger generations. Anna Mary’s own father, Russell King Robertson, was an amateur painter who encouraged his young daughter, and her brothers, to paint.

In her autobiography Moses notes, “He liked to see us draw pictures.” Many members of the Moses Family took up painting as both a hobby and a vocation after seeing the success Grandma garnered. Grandma Moses History On September 7, 1860, Anna Mary Robertson was born into a farming family in Greenwich, a small upstate New York community just thirty miles from Bennington, Vt. Her father, Russell King Robertson, was a farmer, operated a flax mill, and was also an amateur painter. At twelve, Anna Mary went to work as a “hired girl” on a neighboring farm. After fifteen years of this type of work, at the age of 27, she met a “hired man,” Thomas Salmon Moses, and they married. Hearing that the South was a land of opportunity, on their wedding day they boarded a train and headed for North Carolina. Their trip was shortened, however, in Staunton, Virginia, where they had stopped for a night. Here they were persuaded to take over as tenants for a local farm. Anna Mary loved the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley, and they and their children stayed there until 1905 when they returned to New York.

They bought a farm in Eagle Bridge naming it “Mt. Nebo” after the Biblical mountain where Moses disappeared. In 1927, Thomas Moses died of a heart attack on this farm. Anna Mary Moses did not sit idle as she tended to the work on the farm. In 1932, she went to Bennington to care for her daughter Anna, who was suffering from tuberculosis. It was Anna who challenged her mother to duplicate a yarn-embroidered picture. Anna Mary Robertson Moses began stitching, but when arthritis struck, it became increasingly difficult for Moses to do needlework. Her sister suggested painting instead, which was the very beginning of Grandma Moses’ career. In 1936 or ’37, Moses was asked to contribute a painting to a women’s exchange. After setting in the drugstore window for over a year, her painting caught the eye of a New York City collector, Louis Caldor. He enjoyed seeking out native “artistic” finds during his travels, and purchased that one painting from the window, as well as every Moses’ painting the drugstore had. He obtained Moses’ name and address, and went to meet her.

For the next few years, Caldor’s attempts to interest museums and galleries in New York with her art were rebuffed. It was appreciated and admired, but learning of the artist’s age, 88, the dealers felt they could never reap a profit on their investment. Caldor persisted, and in 1939 three of Moses paintings were included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Open only to museum members, this show had no immediate impact on Grandma’s career. In 1940, Caldor visited the Galerie St. Etienne, which had been recently founded by Otto Kallir, a Viennese émigré. The gallery specialized in modern Austrian masters but Kallir was also interested in the work of self-taught painters because it was believed to be “purer” and “more original” than that of trained painters. As such an artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses made her public debut at the Galerie St. Etienne in October 1940. Only garnering modest success, this show was followed by a Thanksgiving festival organized by Gimbels Department Store in which many of Moses’ painting were put on view.

“Grandma” traveled to New York, delivered a public talk on jams and preserved fruits, and won over the hardened New York press corps. The legend of Grandma Moses was finally born. Moses became a local celebrity. She had exhibitions at upstate New York venues and was sought out by vacationers who wanted her works as souvenirs. After several years of struggling to manage the seasonal tourist business, she agreed to let Galerie St. Etienne and the American British Art Center act as her exclusive representatives. These entities launched a series of traveling exhibitions that brought Grandma Moses to more than thirty U.S. states and ten European countries. Her celebrity status grew both nationally and internationally. What followed was nothing short of a rags-to-riches story of this elderly painter. In 1946, Kallir edited the first monograph on the artist, Grandma Moses: American Primitive, and oversaw the licensing of the first Moses Christmas cards. The following year the book was reprinted and the greeting card license taken over by Hallmark. In 1949, Moses received a special award from President Truman, and the following year, a documentary film on her life was nominated for an Academy Award.

Her autobiography, My Life’s History, was published in 1952. Traveling exhibitions, books and greeting cards, posters, drapery fabrics, china plates, and more were now enjoyed by people around the world. Grandma was able to broadcast from her home in Eagle Bridge to the larger world, and the rare use of color television allowed her paintings to be shown during her interview with Edward R. Murrow in 1955. As proof of the adage “it’s never too late,” Grandma continued to be featured on the cover of publications like Life and Time magazines. In 1960, in celebration of her 100th birthday, “Grandma Moses Day” was declared by New York’s governor, Nelson Rockefeller. Yet another celebration took place a year later when she turned 101, but it was during that year that she passed away on December 13, 1961, which became front page news all over America and throughout much of Europe.

Anna Mary Robertson (1860 - 1961) - Genealogy Anna Mary Robertson Greenwich, Washington, New York, United States Death: in Hoosick Falls, Renesselaer, New York, United States Place of Burial: Sep 7 1861 - Greenwich, NY Death: Dec 13 1961 - Eagle Bridge, NY Husband: Russell Robertson, Margaret Robertson (born Shanahan) Brother: Sep 7 1860 - Greenwich, Washington, NY Death: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer, NY Parents: Russell King Robertson, Margaret Robertson (born Shanahan) Husband: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls Husband: Russell King Robertson, Margaret Robertson (born Shanahan) Husband: Sep 7 1860 - Greenwich, Washington, New York, USA Death: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer, New York, USA Parents: Sep 7 1860 - Greenwich, Washington, New York, USA Death: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls

, Rensselaer, New York, USA Parents: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls, New York Father: Sep 7 1860 - Greenwich, Washington, New York, USA Death: Dec 13 1961 - Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer, New York, USA Parents: Russell King Robertson, Margaret Robertson (born Shanahan) Husband: Anna Mary (Robertson) Moses: September 7, 1860-December 13, 1961 Parents: Russell Robertson 1820-1901 and Margaret Shanahan 1840-c.1880 Husband: Thomas Moses 1862-1927 Children:Ten children, 5 lived to be adults: Forrest Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist.

She is most often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. Moses had ten children but five died at birth. Although her family and friends called her either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses," she first exhibited as "Mrs. Moses," yet the press eagerly dubbed her "Grandma Moses," which stuck." LIFE magazine celebrated her 100th birthday by featuring her on its September 19, 1960 cover. Grandma Moses' paintings were used to publicize numerous American holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas and Mother's Day. Exemplary of her status, a Mother's Day Feature in True Confessions (1947) noted how "Grandma Moses remains prouder of her preserves than of her paintings, and proudest of all of her four children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren." During the 1950s, Grandma Moses' exhibitions were so popular that they broke attendance records all over the world. "A cultural icon, the spry, productive nonagenarian was continually cited as an inspiration for housewives, widows and retirees.

Her images of America's rural past were transferred to curtains, dresses, cookie jars, and dinner ware, and used to pitch cigarettes, cameras, lipstick and instant coffee." In 1950, the National Press Club cited her as one of the five most newsworthy women and the National Association of House Dress Manufacturers honored her as their 1951 Woman of the Year. At age 88, Mademoiselle magazine named Grandma Moses a “Young Woman of the Year.” Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art awarded her its first honorary doctorate degree. Due to a lingering cold, she received the degree in absentia, presenting her acceptance speech via a special telephone hookup. According to art historian Judith Stein, Grandma Moses was "practical at heart, turning to painting in her seventies after working with worsted wools for embroidered compositions," which risked being eaten by moths. She painted mostly scenes of rural life. Others have noted that she abandoned a career in embroidery because of arthritis.

Grandma Moses told reporters that she turned to painting in order to create the postman's Christmas gift, seeing as "was easier to make [a painting] than to bake a cake over a hot stove." Stein notes that "her sense of accomplishment in her painting was rooted in her ability to make 'something from nothing', as Lucy Lippard defined the aesthetics of women's 'hobby art' in 1978." Stein considers [Moses'] quilting work, for which she transformed cloth scraps into useful and beautiful objects, akin to hobby art. Her early style is less individual and more realistic (also known as primitive art), despite her lack of knowledge of (or perhaps rejection of) basic perspective. She did not develop her immediately recognizable signature folk style until later. Many of her early paintings in the realist style were given to family members as thank-you gifts after her visits. She was a prolific painter, generating over 3600 canvasses in 3 decades. Before her fame, she would charge $2 for a small painting and $3 for a large.

Her winter paintings are reminiscent of some of the known winter paintings of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, such as The Hunters in the Snow and Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap. In 1938 a New York engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor, who was driving through Hoosick Falls saw some of her paintings displayed in a drug store window. They were priced from $3 to $5, depending on size. He bought them all, drove to the artist's home at Eagle Bridge and bought ten others she had there. The next year, three Grandma Moses paintings were included in "Contemporary Unknown American Painters" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She did not remain unknown for long. Her first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted," opened October 1940 at Otto Kallir's New York City gallery Galerie Saint-Etienne, followed by a meet-and-greet with the artist and an exhibition of 50 paintings a Gimbel's Department Store November 15, followed by a third solo show in as many months, at the Whyte Gallery, Washington, D.C.

"Gimbels had supplemented Moses' art display with a 'table beneath the paintings spread [with] samples of Grandma's culinary talents- homebaked bread, rolls and cake, plus some of the preserves which won her prizes at the county fair." This brought her to the attention of collectors all over the world, and her paintings became highly sought after. After her death, large traveling exhibitions circulated throughout Europe and Japan, where her work was particularly well received. Her paintings were soon reproduced on Christmas cards, tiles and fabrics in America and abroad. 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 trophy 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 and titled it Grandma Moses: My Life's History. On her 100th birthday in 1960, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller proclaimed the day "Grandma Moses Day" in her honor.

In November 2006, her work Sugaring Off (1943), became her highest selling work at US $1.2 million. The work was a clear example of the simple rural scenes she became known for. A 1942 piece, The Old Checkered House, 1862 was appraised at the Memphis 2004 Antiques Roadshow. The painting was a summer scene in Geneva, New York, not as common as her winter landscapes. Originally purchased in the 1940s for under $10, the piece was assigned an insurance value of $60,000 by the appraiser, Alan Fausel. Another of her paintings, Fourth of July, was given by Otto Kallir to the White House and still hangs there today. The character Granny on the popular 1960s rural comedy television series The Beverly Hillbillies was named Daisy Moses as an homage to Grandma Moses, who died shortly before the series began.She is buried in Hoosick Falls, New York. Norman Rockwell, who, for a time, lived in Arlington, Vermont, was a friend of Grandma Moses who lived in nearby Eagle Bridge, New York.

Grandma Moses also appears on the far left edge in the Norman Rockwell painting Christmas Homecoming, which was printed on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post of December 25, 1948. A U.S. commemorative stamp was issued in her honor in 1969. Sources: Grandma Moses Anna Mary Robertson Moses "Grandma" Moses The late Lin Van Buren wrote and submitted this biography. One of the best-known American artists of the 20th century, "Grandma" Moses, began her painting career in Rensselaer County. She is special to us not just because she produced her world-famous paintings in our county, but because our county was the SUBJECT of most of her paintings. Her legacy to us is paintings from the mid-20th century that were of her childhood in the 1860s and the 1870s, and of the world she saw around her in Hoosick in later life as the seasons passed.

She painted for us scenes of rural life in this part of New York state, showing us such cyclical events as the maple-sugar harvest, the catching of the Thanksgiving turkey, the first snowfall, quilt-making and the country fair. The scenes that "Grandma" Moses painted were scenes familiar to all our Rensselaer County ancestors of her era. And "Grandma" Moses has, through her extraordinary perception, memory and talent, preserved these glimpses of our ancestors' way of life for us to see today. Here is the story of "Grandma" Moses. ANNA MARY ROBERTSON MOSES (1860-1961), better known as "GRANDMA" MOSES, was born into a farming family on 7 September 1860 in Greenwich, Washington County, NY, which county, of course, adjoins Rensselaer County and is our neighbor to the north. One of 10 children of Russell King Robertson and his wife Mary, Anna Robertson grew up understanding fully both the hard work of farming and the good times of rural life.

In 1873, when she was 12 years old, she went to work as a servant on a neighbouring farm. She worked in service for about 14 years. Then she met a "God-fearing hired man" two years her junior, Thomas Salmon MOSES (1862-1927) of Hoosick, Rensselaer County, NY. She was already 27 years old - unusually late for the times - when she married Thomas Moses on 9 November 1887. Thomas Moses had heard that there were opportunities for those who went south at this time, and he and his wife decided to move to the Carolinas. En route, they stopped off to visit friends who lived in the Shenandoah Valley, near Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia. The friends persuaded the Moseses to settle there instead, and they did. Thomas and Anna Moses farmed this mountainous, rocky part of western Virginia at quite a few locations for about 16 years. Sometimes they were tenant farmers, but twice, in 1896 and again in 1903, they bought farms.

During her time in Virginia, Anna Moses churned and sold butter to augment the family income. She is also reported to have made and sold potato chips. Despite her relatively late start, Anna Moses gave birth to 10 children, of whom five died in childhood and were buried near their Virginia home. In 1905, when Anna Moses was 45 years old, their farmhouse in Virginia burned, and Thomas Moses decided to return to his native Hoosick, Rensselaer County, NY. He, his wife Anna and their five surviving children - Lloyd MOSES, Forrest K. MOSES, Winona ("Ona") MOSES, Hugh W. MOSES and Anna MOSES - moved from Augusta County, VA to Rensselaer County, NY. Anna Moses later spoke of her great sadness at having to leave behind the graves of her five dear deceased children when they moved away from Virginia. Not long after their return to New York state, Thomas and Anna Moses bought a dairy farm called Mount Nebo, situated near the hamlet of Eagle Bridge in the town of Hoosick, Rensselaer County, NY. For about 20 years, Thomas and Anna Moses and their children worked this farm.

Thomas Moses died there on 15 January 1927; Anna Moses was 67 when she became a widow. Her son Forrest Moses continued to work Mount Nebo farm, and Anna Moses continued to live there for two years while also caring for her ill daughter Anna, who had married her first cousin Frank MOSES (son of Walter MOSES, who was a brother of Thomas Salmon Moses). Frank and Anna Moses resided with their daughters Zoan MOSES and Frances MOSES in nearby Bennington, Bennington County, Vermont, and Anna Moses Moses had contracted tuberculosis. Anna Robertson Moses continued the hard work of farming until the onset of arthritis. She then devoted more of her time to needlepoint, until the arthritis made it impossible for her fingers to do the very close work that needlepoint requires. When her daughter Anna died on 5 February 1933 and was buried in Park Lawn Cemetery in Bennington, VT, Anna Robertson Moses ran her son-in-law's household in Bennington and looked after her granddaughters for two years, until her son-in-law remarried in February 1935 and his new wife took over the running of the household.

It was then that Anna Moses, by now 74 years old, at last had some time to paint, and paint in earnest she did. She had enjoyed drawing all her life and could recall using berry juices to add colour to her childhood drawings in nearby Washington County, NY. But there was much work to do on a farm, and her father had encouraged his little girl to spend her time working, not drawing. Her brothers reportedly teased her about the "lamb scapes" she drew. But during these years and later while she was in service, the young Anna Robertson tucked away in her mind her vivid observations about scenes of ordinary daily life in this part of New York state. At first, her painting was as a hobby and nothing more. She was prolific; during the nearly 30 years of her painting career, she produced more than 1,500 works. She lived sometimes with her son Forrest K. Moses on Mount Nebo farm and sometimes with her youngest son, Hugh W. Moses (1900-1949), who had married Dorothy MORRISON. It was her daughter (one source says it was a daughter-in-law) who first recognised her talent.

This daughter (and if it was a daughter not a daughter-in-law, then this would have been Winona Moses) arranged to have four of Anna Robertson Moses's paintings displayed in the window of W. D. Thomas's drug store in the village of Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer County, NY in 1938, at which time Anna Moses was 77 years old. During the Easter holidays of that year, a New York City engineer and amateur art collector named Louis J. CALDOR, while travelling through the area, just happened to stop off in Hoosick Falls and sees these paintings in the drug-store window. He saw in them great potential, and he purchased all the displayed paintings on the spot. He also sought out the artist and bought "all 15" of her paintings (another source says that he bought "more than 20" of her paintings). It was Louis Caldor who launched Anna Robertson Moses on her professional career. He arranged for three of her paintings to be included in an October 1939 exhibition of "Contemporary Unknown American Painters" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

"Grandma" Moses became an overnight sensation - at the age of 79 years. On 9 October 1940, Otto Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne in New York City staged a highly successful one-woman show entitled "What a Farm Wife Painted". This brought her to the attention of art collectors all over the world, and her paintings were highly sought after. She went on to have exhibitions of her work throughout Europe and even 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 celebrated her 100th birthday on 7 September 1960. New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller proclaimed the day "Grandma Moses Day" in her honor. She died on 13 December 1961 at Hoosick Falls at the age of 101 years and was buried beside her husband in the New Upper Maple Grove Cemetery at the south end of Main Street in the village of Hoosick Falls, in the town of Hoosick, Rensselaer County, NY. The gravestone of Anna M. Robertson wife of Thomas S.

Moses is inscribed with this epitaph: "Her primitive paintings captured the spirit and preserved the scene of a vanishing countryside." She had outlived at least eight of her 10 children; one son, Forrest K. Moses (1893-1974), survived her, and I haven't yet been able to determine if her son Lloyd Moses was still living in 1961. Art historians classify "Grandma" Moses as an "American primitive" painter. Her style was often copied by others. In her own family, her son Forrest K. Moses also showed a talent for painting, as did his grandson ("Grandma" Moses's great-grandson), Will MOSES, who today continues his painting and resides with his wife, Sharon, and their children Jerry MOSES, Lloyd MOSES and Georgianna MOSES at the same 200-year-old Mount Nebo farm in Eagle Bridge where "Grandma" Moses lived and painted. "Grandma" Moses's paintings hang in public and private collections all over the world, but two locations closer to her home have a number of her paintings on view to the public. One is the Galerie St.

Etienne , still associated with the Kallir family, at 24 West 57th Street, New York City, NY 10019, telephone (212) 245-6734, fax (212) 675-8493, e-mail Galerie St. Etienne . The other is The Bennington Museum , West Main Street, Bennington, VT 05201, telephone (802) 447-1571. Although Mount Nebo farm where "Grandma" Moses lived is a private home and is not open to the public, her great-grandson Will Moses does run the Mount Nebo Gallery , 60 Grandma Moses Road, P. O. Box 94, Eagle Mills, NY 12057, telephone (518) 686-4334, toll-free telephone (800) 328-6326. "Grandma" Moses sometimes painted scenes as she looked at them, but most of the time, she painted from memory.

"I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees," she once explained, "but when I get ready to paint, I just close my eyes and imagine a scene." Of course, it isn't feasible to name here all 1,500-plus pictures she painted, but some particular favorites of mine are these: Sugaring Off (1955), about the gathering in of maple syrup; Catching the Thanksgiving Turkey (1943, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City); Hoosick River in Summer (1952); The Lake (1957), with its winter hues; The Old Checkered House (1944), of an inn in Hoosick destroyed by fire in 1907, painted at various seasons of the year; Haying Time, another milestone in a farming year; The Quilting Bee (1950), with all its vibrancy of colour and hum of activity; The Country Fair, with all the excitement of a summer fete; Candle-Dipping Day, with its vats of tallow under the trees; Grandma Moses The Old Oaken Bucket | BetterWall.com Grandma Moses The Old O

aken Bucket From: Crocker Art Museum Limited Edition: 12 Banners [ SOLD OUT !

] Price: $525 details hanging and care Known for her naive folk art, Grandma Moses (1860 ï¿½ 1961) had a long and prolific career, especially considering that she did not start painting until she was 75 years old. She began by creating works based on Currier and Ives prints as well as images from newspapers and magazines. She went on to paint scenes from her own memory of growing up in late-nineteenth century rural America. She worked somewhat methodically, first painting her vast, flat landscapes and then peopling the scenes with contented villagers, farmers, animals, and children busy at work or hard at play. These banners feature a detail of Grandma Mosesï¿½ 1944 work, The Old Oaken Bucket. Rolling hills of green are punctuated with flowers and peopled with rural folks walking, talking, working and playing while animals dot the fields. The whole of the work creates a feeling of a bygone era remembered with nostalgia but lacking any irony or saccharine sentiment. As a naï¿½ve artist in the folk art tradition, Moses had no formal training as a painter.

One of the marvels of this particular work is the stream that flows through the scene. She has managed to produce the flowing water capturing the light as it dapples the surface while the water moves in a convincingly natural and irregular fashion. Both sides of this banner are identical. Another banner from the exhibition features a winter scene by Moses, Sugaring Off . These banners were displayed around Sacramento, California from September 8, 2007 through January 6, 2008 to promote the exhibition, Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation at the Crocker Art Museum. The exhibition was also seen at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York; Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and the John and Mabel Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. American folk artist, Anna Mary Robertson ï¿½Grandmaï¿½ Moses (1860 ï¿½ 1961) came to her craft only when she was well into her 70s.

She had begun working in embroidery to fill time after she was widowed in 1927, but with arthritis crippling her hands she eventually switched to painting. Her works of bucolic, turn-of-the-century rural life evoke a thoroughly non-ironic nostalgia that catapulted her works to fame. Her first solo exhibition was held in New York in 1940, and she went on to create over 1,600 paintings before her death at the age of 101. Exhibition: Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation Material: Printed vinyl Dimensions: 31" x 72" (78.7cm x 182.9cm) Summary Without making a statement about contemporary life, without overly syrupy sentiment, the work of Grandma Moses stands the test of time just as the images and ideas she expressed stand the test of time as reminders of a bygone era of American life. Picking up the brush late in life, she went on to a prolific and admired career as a painter known for her seasonal scenes of rural life.

From the exhibition "Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation" come 12 banners featuring a summer's day in her vividly-rendered America of yore. Hanging your banner Hanging your banner is easy ï¿½ just put a few screws in the wall or ceiling and PRESTO, youï¿½re ready to display your beautiful banner. To make it even easier, each BetterWall banner comes with a free hanging system that gives the impression that your banner is floating just an inch off the wall. Caring for your banner Your banner is a unique and durable piece of art. Having been displayed outside, it has weathered the elements and remained beautifulï¿½so it can obviously take a lot of wear and tear! Slight scuffs, small smudges, or minor creases are not noticeable when the banner is hung, and are a part of the bannerï¿½s authentic appeal. Storing your banner When not on display, your banner can be rolled and stored in the tube provided. Always roll your banner from the bottom and place it in a cool place. Related Suggestions:

Question: By which name was American artist Anna Mary Roberston Moses, who began painting in her 70s, better known?
Answer: Grandma Moses