Grandma Moses
A farmer’s widow who took up painting at 78 and was famous by 80
Anna Mary Robertson was born on a farm in upstate New York in 1860, one of ten children. At twelve she left home to work as a hired girl in neighbouring households, cooking and cleaning for fifteen years before marrying a farm worker, Thomas Moses, in 1887. They farmed in Virginia and then near Eagle Bridge, New York. She bore ten children; five died in infancy.
She had always liked making things, and in her sixties took up embroidering scenes in wool. When arthritis made holding a needle painful, a sister suggested she try painting instead. She was in her late seventies. She worked on a table in her farmhouse, using house paint at first, painting memories of sugaring off, harvests, quilting bees and sleigh rides.
In 1938 an engineer and collector called Louis Caldor spotted a few of her paintings in the window of a drugstore in Hoosick Falls, bought them all and drove to her farm to buy more. The following year three were shown at the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first solo exhibition in New York. The newspapers called her Grandma Moses and the name stuck.
She painted around 1,500 pictures over the next two decades, appeared on television and had her hundredth birthday declared Grandma Moses Day in New York State. She died in 1961, aged 101.