A renowned folk artist, Grandma Moses started her career at the age of 78 and is a prime example of someone who successfully created an art career at a late age. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 December 13, 1961), or Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. WebHer paintings continue to grow in popularity, and now sell for over $1 million. We've shipped millions of items worldwide for our 1+ million artists. [10], As a young wife and mother, Moses was creative in her home; for example, in 1918 she used housepaint to decorate a fireboard. Her father ran a flax mill and was a farmer. Her sister Celestia suggested that painting would be easier for her, and this idea spurred Moses's painting career in her late 70s. In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went. She left home at a young age, with minimal education and went to work on a neighboring farm. 1950's. He bought their supply and ten more from her Eagle Bridge house for $3 or $5 each. He even depicted Moses in the crowd for his 1948 Christmas painting featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, scenes for which he was particularly famous. She created embroideries for family and friends, but by the age of 76, she had developed arthritis, making her hobby a painful one. At the age of 27, she met Thomas Salmon Moses, who worked on the same farm. Untitled (Covered Bridge), ca. Her autobiography is My Life's History, she won numerous awards, and she held two honorary doctoral degrees. The appeal of this house was so great that it became the subject of other "Grandma Moses" products including being depicted on an Atlas China collector plate (1950-60); and perhaps most interestingly becoming the inspiration for a shade of red lipstick ("Primitive Red") by the Richard Hudnut Company that featured a Moses rendering of the Old Checkered House in its advertisement. Moses and her husband began their married life in Virginia, where they worked on farms. This simple act would launch Moses' professional career when in 1938, after being on view for almost a year, Louis Caldor, a New York City art collector driving through the area, saw her paintings. Whilst on the left, the men of the household use this soap to wash the sheep in the pond." Equally challenging tasks, Moses cleverly uses compositional devices within the painting to show the divisions of farm labor along gender lines. What is the Value of your Grandma Moses collectibles? The indefatigable artist has been the subject of exhibitions at the worlds most prestigious institutions, from the Museum of Modern Art and Centre Pompidou to the Stedelijk Museum and Tate Modern. Her specialty was depicting rural life, and she made landscapes and portraits based on that scenery. Even celebrities, coveted her work including Bob Hope who according to art historian Karal Ann Marling in his January 17, 1946 column, "boasted that he had just bought a wintertime barnyard scene by the eminent G. Moses. The move proved fortuitous as it led Moses to start making art again. At the ripe age of 78, Mrs. Moses began painting and would come to be known affectionately as Grandma Moses.. Web1942 Grandma Moses Painting Value (2019) | $100,000Insurance Watch Read Appraisal Transcript GUEST: This has been in our family since Grandma Moses painted it. Her name was a now household word in America, and after the end of World War II her reputation had spread abroad as well. She was not home but her daughter-in-law told him to return tomorrow and Moses would show him another ten paintings. In her later reflections on the area she stated, "five graves I left in that beautiful Shenandoah Valley". LIFE magazine featured her on the cover, while New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller proclaimed the day Grandma Moses Day.. Art remained a family pastime that Moses all but abandoned for a period in her life beginning as an early teen. Then, Caldor met Otto Kallir, the owner of a new gallery who was also drawn to the "folk" quality of Moses' work and her ability to capture the essence of American life. An art collector purchased her paintings from a drug store window and more from her home in 1938. 'She knocks out a work of art faster than a chorus girl can put on her lipstick." 'Yet despite the shadow that hangs over the world today, we in America have much to be thankful for." Anna Mary Robertson Moses grew up on a farm in upstate New York, where she worked as a hired girl, helping neighbors and relatives with cleaning, cooking, and sewing. She wrote an autobiography (My Life's History), won numerous awards, and was awarded two honorary doctoral degrees. Some found the work too simple or primitive, others found that it did not align with the then popular Surrealist and just developing Abstract Expressionist art movements; however Caldor persevered. She also received many accolades including a Women's National Press Club Award in 1949 that was presented to her by President Harry S. Truman. The "Checkered House" paintings make up another well-known category of Moses' paintings. [] The Old Checkered House, one of her most popular subjects was a local landmark, one of those 'old-time homes,' Grandma Moses said, that were 'going fast." A national membership group of museum friends who share a love of American art and craft and our commitment to celebrating the extraordinary creativity of our nations artists. WebThroughout her lifetime Grandma Moses produced about 2,000 paintings, most of them on masonite board. Indeed, Moses was a pioneer and a visionary, staunchly independent herself and interested in better equality for all. All Americans mourn her loss. Kallir did however, manage to convince her to finally write her biography. This aspect of her work is quite ironic, for although the subject of her work supports self-sustainability, and she herself held ambiguous views on the "progress" of industrialization, her popularization was fueled by burgeoning capitalism. [18] A Mother's Day feature in True Confessions (1947) written by Eleanor Early 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. Marling reasons, "because she had been enlivening the American breakfast table for what seemed to be forever with her quips and down-to-earth advice, the death of Grandma Moses was headline news in papers large and small. The Hallmark greeting card company, for instance, profited greatly from an arrangement with the artist beginning in 1947 to create a set of holiday cards featuring reproductions of original Moses paintings. The following year, three paintings by Grandma Moses were included in MOMAs exhibition of unknown contemporary American painters. She is buried there at the Maple Grove Cemetery. We have an abundance of paintings that pay homage to her style. But I don't believe in painting ugliness. Rather than only capturing the key moment of the holiday, that of the feast, Moses' subjects often included the necessary (and often practical) activities required to prepare for the holiday itself, here the catching of the turkey that will be the focal point of the Thanksgiving dinner. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. Her exhibitions were incredibly popular and well-attended. There is a specifically American quality to Moses' work, not only in the reminder that the first settlers to arrive on the American frontiers were farmers by necessity, but also in an appreciation of the healthy values embodied within a quickly eroding traditional way of life. In 1905, they returned to the Northeastern United States and settled in Eagle Bridge, New York. Highly decorative, in the mode of the primitive painters with whom Grandma Moses was often grouped, her landscapes did more than present hills and valleys and trees and fields; they told stories as well, or inspired the viewer to make them up." She continued to keep house, cook, and sew for wealthy families for 15 years. Her discovery by a wider audience came about due to the purchases of her paintings by a New York art collector in 1938. Curator Mary Savig details an artists journey to create the powerful performance work Metabolizing the Border that explores the physical and psychological experiences migrants face while crossing the borderlands. Her specialty was depicting rural life, and she made landscapes and portraits based on that scenery. USD ($), Copyright 2023 Fine Art America - All Rights Reserved. [4], At age 12, she left home and performed farm chores for a wealthy neighboring family. Anna Mary Robertson Moses typically signed her paintings Grandma Moses or simply Moses. She frequently dated, numbered and titled her paintings as well, usually on the reverse and affixed with an official Grandma Moses Properties label. Web1942 Grandma Moses Painting Value (2019) | $100,000Insurance Watch Read Appraisal Transcript GUEST: This has been in our family since Grandma Moses painted it. The first, arranged as a publicity event by the Hallmark company for her 88th birthday, included a seven-foot-wide cake designed by artist and invited guest Norman Rockwell. It is also worth noting that although she did not paint often in early life, Moses put her hand to a great deal of crafting projects, and she became particularly talented with needlework. [2] She briefly attended a one-room school. US$35,500. She retired from farming, but her next career was just beginning. Painting in an untrained manner that refused to follow more traditional rules of classical art making, she elevated the status of nave, folk, outsider, Art Brut, and primitive art styles. Never truly embracing the "art world" she remained humble, even surprised at the interest in her work. As her career advanced, she created complicated, panoramic compositions of rural life. Although she loved living in the Shenandoah Valley, in 1905 Anna and Robert moved to a farm in Eagle Bridge, New York at her husband's urging. He liked to see us draw pictures, it was a penny a sheet and lasted longer than candy. Regardless of the monetary value of your artwork, if it is personally meaningful, you should consider having the object conserved. Moses spent most of her life in Eagle Bridge, New York, fifteen miles northwest of Bennington, depicting the rolling landscape of Washington County. Marling further describes how, "Grandma Moses sympathized with people who could afford her cards but not the pictures that hung in galleries, so as a helpful tip she told them, 'If you put shellac over the [card],' she advised, 'no one can tell it from a real painting. Moses paintings can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and many other major museums. View more in our Grandma Moses Price Guide. "[1], During a visit to Hoosick Falls in 1938, Louis J. Caldor, an art collector who worked as an engineer in the state of New York, saw paintings made by Moses in the window of a drug store. JPY () This CBS Sunday Morning broadcast which aired on December 13, 2015, the anniversary of Grandma Moses birth, provides a discussion of her art and life. 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