Grandma Moses Day is not until her birthday on September 7, but I came across her this week and she really piqued my interest. She was born in 1860, the year before Abraham Lincoln’s presidency began and lived all the way to John F. Kennedy’s presidency, dying in 1961.
Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860-1961), known as Grandma Moses, was born in Greenwich, New York, now less that one hour drive north of Albany. She was the third of ten children. Moses was actually a ‘double-descendant’ (through both maternal and paternal lines) of ancestors who came to America on the Mayflower—quintessentially American!
At 12-years old, she left home and performed farm chores for a wealthy neighboring family. She continued to keep house, cook, and sew for wealthy families for 15 years. One of these families, the Whitesides’, noticed her interest in their Currier and Ives prints and bought her chalk and wax crayons.*
She sent her early works along with her raspberry jam to a local county fair, where the jam won a ribbon, but the art went unnoticed. However, in 1939, age 79, a traveling art collector saw her rural scenes in a local pharmacy window and bought them all, launching her into her iconic career.
Thomas Salmon Moses was a “hired man” on the Whitesides’ farm. She was 27 when they were married and established themselves near Staunton, Virginia, where they spent nearly two decades, living and working in turn on five local farms.**
In 1905, they returned to New York and settled in Eagle Bridge, New York, now only 45 minutes north of Albany. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. She embroidered pictures with yarn. To supplement the family income, Anna made potato chips and churned butter from the milk of a cow that she purchased with her savings. When Thomas Moses was about 67 years of age, in 1927, he died of a heart attack, Anna’s son helped her operate the farm. She never married again. In 1936, she retired and moved to a daughter’s home. She was known as either “Mother Moses” or “Grandma Moses.”, Although she first exhibited as “Mrs. Moses,” the press dubbed her “Grandma Moses.” The nickname stuck.***
By the age of 76, Moses had developed arthritis, which made embroidery painful. Her sister, Celestia, suggested that painting would be easier for her; this idea spurred Moses’s painting career. She initially charged $3 to $5 for a painting, depending upon its size. Yikes.
Timing is everything. ‘Mrs. Moses’ tapped into the groundswell of patriotism that rose during the duress of The Depression through to the victory of WWII. Whereas modern art was largely a European sensation, Moses was as American as apple pie. In fact, she called her painted scenes of rural life “old-timey” New England landscapes.****
“When Grandma Moses paints something, you know right away what it is-you don’t need to cock your head sideways and try to deduct if it is maybe a fricassee of sick oyster, or maybe an abscessed bicuspid or just a plain hole in the ground.”
In 1953, she was featured on a cover of Time Magazine.
Neither her work or her manner was affected by all of the fame and attention. “That I am too old to care for now.” *****
She was a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendents and Daughters of the American Revolution. Her 100th birthday was proclaimed “Grandma Moses Day” by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Grandma Moses was prolific, generating more than 1,600 canvasses.
She produced Sugaring Off in 1943 when she was 83-years old. In 2006.
It sold at Christie’s for US$1,360,000.*****
*https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Women_s_Almanac/ELq9DwAA QBAJhl=en&gbpv=1&dq=She+was+a+prolific+painter,+generating+more+than+1,500+ canvasses+in+three+decades.&pg=PT397&printsec=frontcover
**Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.); Doreen Bolger; Doreen Bolger Burke
(1980). American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A catalogue of works byartists born between 1846 and 18 64. Vol. 3. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 390.
*** Feeder, Deborah G. The American Women’s Almanac: 500 Years of Making
**** Kallir, Jane, Roger Cardinal and Michael D. Hall. Grandma Moses in the 21st Century. Newhaven. Yale UP. 2001.
*****Lot 139, Christie’s sale 30 November 2006 https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4816730
