Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), popularly known as Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. Moses rose to fame in the 1950s. She was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary in 1950, published her autobiography in 1952, and was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1953.

Starting at the age of 12, Moses worked as a live-in housekeeper for 15 years. Moses and her husband began their married life in Virginia, where they worked on farms. In 1905, they settled in Eagle Bridge, New York. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. Moses worked in a variety of arts and crafts. Arthritis forced her to focus on painting as she aged.

In her 1961 front page obituary, The New York Times wrote, "The simple realism, nostalgic atmosphere and luminous color with which Grandma Moses portrayed simple farm life and rural countryside won her a wide following. She was able to capture the excitement of winter's first snow, Thanksgiving preparations and the new, young green of oncoming spring...In person, Grandma Moses charmed wherever she went."

Moses's work has been a subject of numerous art exhibitions worldwide and has been extensively merchandised. In 2006, her 1943 painting titled Sugaring Off was sold at Christie's New York for , setting an auction record for the artist.

Early life

Anna Mary Robertson was born in Greenwich, New York, on September 7, 1860, the third of ten children born to Margaret Shanahan Robertson and Russell King Robertson. Her father was a farmer and also ran a flax mill.

Robertson was always interested in art. Her father was also a painter.

At age 12, she left home and to be a hired girl for a wealthy neighboring family. She kept house, cooked, and sewed for wealthy families for 15 years. One family, the Whitesides, noticed her interest in their Currier and Ives prints and bought her chalk and wax crayons. thumb upright=0.8At one of the farms where Robertson worked, the hired man was Thomas Salmon Moses. When she was 27, they married and established themselves near Staunton, Virginia, where they spent over a decade renting local farms such as the Bell, Eakle, and Dudley farms where they primarily produced dairy products.

In January 1901, the couple bought Mount Airy farm near Verona, Virginia. They sold Mount Airy and bought Mount Nebo, which their mailman named after the mountain where Moses died. To supplement the family income at Mount Nebo, Anna made potato chips and churned butter from the milk of a cow that she purchased with her savings. She was known as either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses", and although she first exhibited as "Mrs. Moses", the press dubbed her "Grandma Moses", and the nickname stuck.

Art career

As a wife and mother, Moses was creative in her home. In 1918, she used house paint to decorate a fireboard. Beginning in 1932, Moses used yarn to embroider pictures for friends and family. She was frequently described as a primitive artist because the lack of formal training is so self-evident in her work.

She painted scenes of rural life from earlier days, which she called "old-timey" New England landscapes. Moses sat quietly to reminisce and imagine until inspiration struck, "then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live."

She was a prolific painter, generating more than 1,500 canvasses in three decades. She charged $3–5 for a painting, depending upon its size. As her fame increased her works were sold for $8–10,000. A German fan said, "There emanates from her paintings a light-hearted optimism; the world she shows us is beautiful and it is good. You feel at home in all these pictures, and you know their meaning. The unrest and the neurotic insecurity of the present day make us inclined to enjoy the simple and affirmative outlook of Grandma Moses."

Initial exhibitions

1953 photo of Moses donating her painting Battle of Bennington to Mrs. George Kuhner who accepts it for DAR During a visit to Hoosick Falls in 1938, art collector Louis J. Caldor saw Moses' paintings in the window of a drug store. He bought them all and went to her house in Eagle Bridge. Caldor supplied Moses with canvas and supplies and encouraged her to keep painting in her own style while he enthusiastically pushed her work in New York City. His effort paid off the following year when Sidney Janis included three Grandma Moses paintings in his "Contemporary Unknown American Painters" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

Moses was one of several folk artists discovered between the two world wars. The Museum of Modern Art was entering its second decade and was a catalyst for the broader appreciation of folk art.

Caldor heard about Otto Kallir's interest in primitive artists and showed him Moses' work. Kallir agreed to hold a solo exhibition at his Galerie St. Etienne in New York. "What a Farm Wife Painted" was well-attended when it opened in October 1940. Kallir showed 34 of Moses' paintings priced from $20–250 and sold three. Her art displays included samples of her baked goods and preserves that won Moses prizes at the county fair. Her third solo show in as many months was held at the Whyte Gallery, Washington, D.C.

In 1944, Moses was represented by the American British Art Center and the Galerie St. Etienne, which increased her sales. Her paintings were exhibited throughout Europe and the United States over the next 20 years. During the 1950s, her exhibitions broke attendance records around the world. Art historian Judith Stein wrote, "A cultural icon, the spry, productive nonagenarian was continually cited as an inspiration for housewives, widows and retirees." Moses lived in Eagle Bridge, New York, and after 1938 the Rockwells had a house in nearby Arlington, Vermont. The painting also appears on a U.S. commemorative stamp that was issued in Grandma Moses's honor in 1969.

The one-rooom school Robertson attended as a young girl was run as a museum for several years before it was transported to Vermont in 1973. It become part of the Bennington Museum, which has the largest collection of her works in the United States.

From March 15 to June 10, 2001, the National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibited Grandma Moses in the 21st Century, which examined "Moses’ artistic development, her place in the art world at the nexus of folk art, fine art, and popular culture, and the phenomenon of her success." The exhibition was sponsored by AARP.

In a 2004 episode of Antiques Roadshow, Moses' 1942 painting The Old Checkered House, 1862 was appraised for $60,000. The painting was purchased in the 1940s for $10. In a 2019 rerun of the episode, Antiques Roadshow estimated the painting was now worth $100,000.

In November 2006, her 1943 work Sugaring Off became her highest-selling work at $1.2 million.

From November 25, 2025 to July 12, 2026, the Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibited Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work. The exhibition was shown at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from September 12, 2026 to March 29, 2027. The catalog was edited by Leslie Umberger and Randall R. Griffey.

Selected works Sugaring Off (1943). Sold by Christie's in 2006 for US$1,360,000. Sugaring Off (1943). Used for a 1947 Christmas Card that became a bestseller for Hallmark Cards. Wash Day (1945). Rhode Island School of Design Museum A Fire in the Woods (1947). National Gallery of Art. The Departure (1951). Philadelphia Museum of Art. A Gay Time, March 27, 1953 (1953), oil on board. Sold from the personal collection of Nancy and Ronald Reagan at 668 St. Cloud Road, Bel-Air by Christie's in 2016 for $93,750. Autumn in the Berkshires. Dividing of the Ways (1947), oil and tempera on masonite, Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York Haying Time (1945). McDonnell Farm (1943). The Phillips Collection Hoosick Falls in Winter (1944). The Phillips Collection Hoosick Falls (1944). Southern Vermont Arts Center. Thanksgiving Turkey (1943). White Christmas. Private collection; formerly owned by Irving Berlin. Brooklyn Museum, New York City Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, N.Y. Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi Maier Museum of Art at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Virginia Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Muscarelle Museum of Art, William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. Smithsonian American Art Museum University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City