Difference between revisions of "Grandma Moses" - New World Encyclopedia

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[[Image:Grandma Moses NYWTS.jpg |thumb|Grandma Moses (1953)]]
 
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'''Grandma Moses''' (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961) was a renowned [[United States|American]] folk artist. She became well known for her bright and lively paintings of farm life. Her paintings reflected her memories of childhood mostly scenes of rural celebrations and daily life in upstate [[New York]]. Her professional [[art]] career started in her seventies and lasted almost until her death at the age of one hundred one years.   
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'''Grandma Moses''' (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961) was a renowned [[United States|American]] folk artist. She became well known for her bright and lively paintings of farm life. Her paintings reflected her memories of childhood mostly scenes of rural celebrations and daily life in upstate [[New York]]. Her professional [[art]] career started in her seventies and lasted almost until her death at the age of one hundred one years with sixteen hundred paintings to her credit.   
  
 
==Early Life==
 
==Early Life==

Revision as of 19:42, 4 February 2007

Grandma Moses (1953)

Grandma Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961) was a renowned American folk artist. She became well known for her bright and lively paintings of farm life. Her paintings reflected her memories of childhood mostly scenes of rural celebrations and daily life in upstate New York. Her professional art career started in her seventies and lasted almost until her death at the age of one hundred one years with sixteen hundred paintings to her credit.

Early Life

She was born Anna Mary Robertson in Greenwich, New York. She was one of ten children born to Russell and Margaret Robertson. Grandma Moses had little formal education she attended a small one-room schoolhouse with her siblings. As a child, she used fruit juice to paint on pieces of wood or materials her father brought home for her. He brought the other children candy, but she preferred drawing supplies because "it lasted longer than candy."

She left home at the age of twelve to begin working as housekeeper. She keep that same occupation for fifteen years until she met and married Thomas Salmon Moses in 1887. They met while working together on the same farm. The couple relocated in 1887 to Staunton, Virginia to manage a horse ranch. They had ten children but five did not live past infancy.

Thomas Moses missed New York and persuaded his wife to return in 1905. They bought a farm close to where Mother Moses, as she was called at that time, was born in Eagle Bridge. The farm was called "Mount Nebo" after the mountains in the Bible where Moses is believed to have died.

Painting

Thomas Moses suffered a fatal heart attack in 1927. She began painting after his death as her loved pastime of embroidery became too painful due to arthritis. She spent hours a day painting and became quite prolific. She offered her work to friends and family, she submitted them at the local fairs and finally put them in the window of a family owned drugstore.

Her artwork was discovered by Louis J. Caldor, a collector who noticed her paintings in a Hoosick Falls drugstore window in 1938. In 1939 an art dealer named Otto Kallir exhibited some of her work at 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 have exhibitions of her work throughout Europe and even in Japan, where her work was particularly well received. She continued her abundant output of paintings, the demand for which never diminished during her lifetime.

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.

Later in Life

President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club Award for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949. In 1951, she appeared on See It Now, a television program hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

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

"Grandma" Moses celebrated her one hundredth birthday on the seventh of September, 1960. Life magazine commissioned Cornell Capa to make a portrait of Moses for the occasion, which it printed as a cover article. New York governor Nelson Rockefeller also proclaimed the day "Grandma Moses Day" in her honor.

She died at Hoosick Falls on December 13, 1961 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." She had outlived most of her children.

For a sense of the current value of her paintings, a September 2nd 1942 piece entitled "The Old Checkered House, 1862" was appraised at the Memphis 2004 Antiques Roadshow. The painting was unique in that it showed a summer scene, as she was well known for her winter landscapes. Originally purchased in the 40s for $110, appraiser Alan Fausel assigned the piece an insurance value of $60,000.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Hickok, Beth Moses. Remembering Grandma Moses Bennington, Vt. : Beech Seal Press, 1994 ISBN 1884592015
  • Kallir, Jane. Grandma Moses : 25 masterworks New York : Abrams, 1997 ISBN 9780810926974
  • Kallir, Jane; Moses, Grandma; Cardinal, Roger. Grandma Moses in the 21st century Alexandria, VA : Art Services International, 2001 ISBN 0300089279
  • Kallir, Otto. Grandma Moses New York, Abrams 1973 ISBN 9780810901667
  • Ketchum, William C. Grandma Moses : an American original New York, NY : Smithmark, 1996 ISBN 0831780851
  • Marling, Karal Ann. Designs on the heart : the homemade art of Grandma Moses Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2006 ISBN 9780674022263

External links

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