The Artist, Grandma Moses and Her Paintings

A German proverb says, “The oldest trees often bear the sweetest fruit”. Besides my own Grandmother Anderson, an amazing self-taught artist, Grandma Moses, truly inspires me. Anna Mary Robertson lived until she was 101 years old, but she had only started painting when she was 76 years old. Her paintings hang in nine museums in the United States as well as in Paris and Vienna. She is best known as Grandma Moses .

The reason she took up painting so late in life is because arthritis had made it impossible for her to hold her needle to embroider, her favorite hobby. However, she could hold a brush just fine, and not wanting to be idle, she began painting. She is one of the best-known American artists in Europe.

Grandma Moses had her own unique style, which proved to be very popular. Well known for nostalgic scenes in gay colors, she illustrated farm life and the countryside. She had a knack for bringing a simple scene to life.

An art collector saw some of her paintings in a drug store priced from $3 to $5 each. He purchased all of her available art, and the following year she ended up having an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Her art was reproduced on Hallmark Christmas cards, on tiles and fabrics throughout the world.

A German fan said of her art: 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.

Grandma Moses painted only from what was in her memory. She wanted to share how she lived when she was young with everyone. In her 25 years of painting, she produced more than one thousand (that’s 1000) pictures, 25 of which after she was 100 years old! Her paintings went from the price of $3-$5 each to $8,000 - $10,000 each. One of her paintings “Sugaring Off” (1943) was her highest selling work at US $1.2 million in November 2006.

Her work has been compared to that of Henri Rousseau. The particular style they share designates those artists who live in a developed and sophisticated society, but they are not trained in artistic perception and lighting that most artists excel at. In Grandma Moses’ words describing the phenomenon “we make amateur art that sells” .

I would be happy to have a tenth of the fame Grandma Moses did with her art. She is truly inspirational and she was not worried about technique or criticism. She just loved painting.

Alas, the story of Grandma Moses would not be complete without the other part of her bio, which was that she had given birth to ten children, half of which died in infancy. She had begun working as a hired girl at age 12, and continued until she was 27 when she met and married Thomas Salmon Moses. She lived in Virginia and made butter and potato chips, selling them to her neighbors. She continued to run the farm after her husband passed together with her son.

One of Grandma Moses’ paintings, Fourth of July , hangs in the White House and was painted in honor of President Eisenhower.