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Grandma Moses – Anna Mary Robertson Moses: 1860-1961

September 7, 2016 By Wendy Campbell

“If I hadn’t taken up painting, I would have raised chickens…it’s all art.” —Grandma Moses

Grandma MosesBorn on September 7, 1860, Anna Mary Robertson Moses (aka Grandma Moses) was one of the most successful and renowned artists in America and possibly the best-known American artist in Europe. Born in a farming community in Greenwich, New York, Moses had little formal education and left home at the age of 12 to work as a hired girl on a nearby farm. She worked in this capacity until the age of 27 when she married Thomas Salmon Moses, a worker at the farm .

Anna and Thomas invested in a farm in Virginia where they remained for twenty years. During that time, Moses had ten children (five died in infancy). The couple returned to New York in 1905 and settled on a farm in Eagle Bridge.  Thomas died in 1927 and Anna remained on the farm until 1936 when she retired and went to live with her daughter.

Moses’ earliest works were in embroidery which she began making in the 1930s. It was not until her late 70s, when arthritis prevented her from continuing with her craft, that she took up painting. A self-taught artist, her first paintings were copies of prints and postcards. Moses soon began painting her own scenes with subject matter based on her memories of the rural countryside and farm life. In 1938, Moses’ paintings were on display at Thomas’s Drugstore, Hoosick Falls, NY when engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor discovered them and bought them all.

The following year, Moses’ work was included in an exhibition of “contemporary unknown painters” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1940, Moses had her first successful solo show What a Farmwife Painted at the Galerie St. Etienne. Media and viewers alike were charmed by Moses’ “down-home” personality and the simple realism and nostalgia of her paintings. Her ability to capture optimistic scenes of rural activities such as maple sugaring, soap and candle making, haying, etc., were welcomed by a world recovering from WWII and facing the new threat of the Cold War. Soon, other solo shows followed in the US and abroad and Moses developed a large international following. European critics described her work as “lovable,” “fresh,” “charming,” “adorable” and “full of naive and childlike joy.”

Moses was a prolific painter and created more than one thousand paintings in her lifetime. Her works have been reproduced on holiday greeting cards, tiles, fabrics, and in books. In 1949, President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women’s National Press Club Trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art. In 1951, Moses appeared on the Edward R. Murrow television show See It Now, and in 1952, she published her autobiography Grandma Moses: My Life’s History.  In 1953, Moses was on the cover of TIME magazine, and in 1960 on the cover of LIFE magazine celebrating her 100th birthday. Moses also received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949, and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1951.

Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses died on December 13, 1961 at the age of 101. Of her death, her physician, Dr. Clayton E. Shaw, said “she had died of hardening of the arteries, but the best way to describe the cause of death”, he suggested, was to say “she just wore out.”

Moving Day On The Farm - Anna Mary Robertson (Grandma) Moses -1951

A Beautiful World - Anna-Mary-Robertson (Grandma) Moses 1948

Sources: New York Times, Orlando Museum of Art, Galerie St. Etienne

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: American Artists, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, Folk Art, Grandma Moses, Grandma Moses Birthday

5 Women Artists You Should Know

July 2, 2009 By Wendy Campbell

Frida Kahlo - The Broken Column1. Frida Kahlo – July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954. Born in  Coyoacán, Mexico, Kahlo survived many difficult events in her life. She began to paint while recovering in bed from a bus accident in 1925 that left her disabled. Although she made a partial recovery, she was never able to bear  children, had numerous miscarriages, and underwent 32 operations before her death. Her paintings, mostly self-portraits, deal directly with her health and physical challenges. Kahlo was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico and European influences including Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism.

Kahlo’s work was not widely recognized until years after her death. She was often remembered only as artist Diego Rivera’s wife. It was not until the early 1980s, when the artistic movement in Mexico known as Neomexicanismo began, that she became very prominent.

The Child's Bath - Mary Cassatt2. Mary Cassatt – May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926. Known for her depictions of women and children, Cassatt was one of the few active American artists in 19th century French avant-garde. The daughter of a prominent Pittsburgh family, she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She traveled throughout Europe,  settling permanently in Paris in 1874. In that year she exhibited at the Salon and in 1877 met Degas, with whom she maintained a close relationship. His art and ideas had a strong influence on her own work though she did not imitate his style. He introduced her to the Impressionists and she participated in several exhibitions between 1879 – 1886.

While in France, Cassatt sent paintings back to exhibitions in the United States that were among the first impressionist works seen in the US. By advising wealthy American patrons on acquisitions, she also played a vital role in forming some of the most important collections of impressionist art in America.

Blunden Harbour - Emily Carr3. Emily Carr – December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Carr moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she traveled to England to study at the Westminster School of Art in London and other studio schools in England. In 1910, she spent a year studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, France before moving back to British Columbia permanently.

Carr was strongly influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures of British Columbia and Alaska. She did not receive recognition as an artist until she was 57 years of age.  In the 1920s she came into close contact with members of the prominent Group of Seven (artists) after being invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in an exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern. She maintained a close relationship with the group and was included in their exhibitions.

Emily Carr is a Canadian icon.  The fact that she was a woman challenged by the obstacles that faced women of her day, to become an artist of such originality and strength has made her a “darling of the Women’s Movement”.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono - Annie Leibovitz4. Annie Leibovitz – October 2, 1949 – present.  Born in 1949 in Connecticut, USA Leibovitz studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. She became interested in photography  when she lived in the Philippines, where her father was stationed during the Vietnam War with the Air Force.

Leibovitz began photographing for Rolling Stone magazine in 1969 while still a student in San Francisco. Famous for her iconic images of celebrities, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in 1983 she became chief photographer for Vanity Fair. A regular contributor to Vogue as well, she is the winner of numerous awards and her work has been exhibited around the world. In addition to her portraiture, she has also photographed battered women, and the conflicts in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Rwanda. In 2005, American Photo named her the single most influential photographer working today.

Early Skating - Anna Mary Robertson Moses5. Anna Mary Robertson Moses – September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961. Born in a farming community in Greenwich, N. Y, “Grandma Moses” began painting in her seventies after leaving a career in embroidery due to arthritis. A self-taught, renowned folk artist, Moses painted mostly scenes of rural life. In the years directly after World-War-II, Moses was one of the most successful and famous artists in America, and possibly the best known American artist in Europe.

Her simple realism and nostalgic subject matter with which she portrayed farm life and the rural countryside, gained her a large following. She was a prolific painter and during her lifetime she created more than 1,000 paintings.  Moses received honorary doctoral degrees from Russell Sage College in 1949 and from the Moore Institute of Art, Science and Industry, Philadelphia, in 1951.

Sources: MOMA, Wikipedia, National Gallery of Art, Webmuseum Paris, Canadian Encyclopedia, Art History Archive, Contact Press Images, Wikipedia, New York Times

Filed Under: 5 Women Artists Series, ART, Women in Visual Arts Tagged With: Anna Mary Robertson Moses, Annie Leibovitz, Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo, Grandma Moses, Mary Cassatt

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