At 77, Grandma Moses started selling art with her prize-winning pickles
Grandma Moses, Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City, 1946, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the Kallir Family in memory of Otto Kallir, 2016.51, Copyright Grandma Moses Properties
Anna Mary Robertson Moses was looking for something to do “to keep busy and out of mischief” after her husband died. At 77 years old, she had stepped back from her work on her family farm in Eagle Bridge, New York.
Moses was born in 1860, and her father had encouraged her to draw on old newsprint. She used berry and grape juices to brighten her images.
Decades later she returned to art, depicting nostalgic scenes inspired by her rural past. Moses’ work was colorful and lively, and it captured a nation transitioning from the 19th to the 20th century. Her style was viewed as quintessentially American.
Moses sold her pieces at country fairs alongside her prize-winning pickles. A collector saw her paintings in the window of the local pharmacy—and bought them all.
The art world quickly came to know her as Grandma Moses. Otto Kallir first showed Moses’ work in his New York City Gallery, Galerie St. Etienne, in 1940. Then Hallmark purchased the rights to reproduce her paintings on greeting cards. In 1953, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine, celebrated for her youthful spirit and the “old timey” style of her paintings and subject matter. Moses became one of America’s most-loved painters.
In "Grandma Moses Goes to the Big City" (1946), in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, she depicts herself—at age 80—about to leave on her first trip to New York City to see her paintings on view at Galerie St. Etienne.
Moses painted more than 1,500 pieces before her death in 1961 at age 101.
