Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses was one of the most celebrated American folk artists of the 20th century. Painting the details of life in her rural community, Moses only gained popularity following her first exhibition as an octogenarian and quickly became a symbol of American hope during the Cold War era. The moniker ‘Grandma Moses’ was dubbed by the press as an endearing form of address.

Anna Mary Robertson Moses was born in 1860 in Greenwich, New York. Growing up on a farm, Moses’s life was deeply rooted in the agrarian culture of rural New York. She married Thomas Moses in 1887, and together they worked on farms, raising a family of ten children. It wasn’t until her 70s, after arthritis made it difficult for her to embroider, that she began to paint seriously.

While she worked in relative obscurity at the start, Moses’s discovery came at a time when folk artists were beginning to receive broader attention. While living on her farm in upstate New York, Moses, then a widow, devoted her spare time to painting. She gave her paintings to family and friends and showed them at fairs along with her jams and preserves. In the spring of 1938, her works were noticed by collector Louis Caldor in the window of a local drugstore. Caldor returned to New York City determined to introduce Moses to the art world.

After two years of discouragement, Caldor finally captured the interest of Otto Kallir. In 1940, at the age of 80, Moses arrived in New York with her first exhibition, What a Farm Wife Painted, at Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne. The exhibition caught the attention of the media. During a time of great patriotism after the nation’s victory in World War II, modern art was still seen as a European influence, while Moses’s paintings seemed wholly American.

Moses’s paintings reflected the American values and traditions that were cherished by American families, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. They continue to be celebrated for their nostalgic and vivid portrayal of country life. Her works, such as Sugaring Off (1943), which sold at Christie’s New York in 2006 for an auction record price of US$1,360,000, capture the essence of a bygone era with remarkable detail and charm. These scenes of farm activities, seasonal changes, and festive gatherings resonate with simplicity and warmth, offering a window into the past.

In 1952 Otto Kallir gifted her painting July Fourth (1951) to the White House. Following Moses’s death in 1961 at the age of 101, the painting appeared on a US commemorative stap issued in Moses’s honour in 1969. Today, the Bennington Museum in Vermont holds the largest public collection of Moses’s works.