Name/Title
The Postman Painting, Grandma MosesContext
Anna Mary Robinson was born in 1860 in Greenwich, New York. In 1887, she married Thomas Salmon Moses, and the couple moved to Virginia. In 1905 the Moses family moved back to New York, settling near the town of Eagle Bridge. Thomas Moses died in 1927.
For years, busy with children and grandchildren, Anna had limited her creative efforts to embroidered yarn pictures. Then, in her mid-seventies, when arthritis in her hands made fine needlework increasingly tricky, she began painting pictures of her memories of growing up on farms. In these paintings, Grandma Moses presented a somewhat romanticized version of farm life in the mid-nineteenth century, with images of harvests, sugar maple time, barn dances, Christmas dinners, and beautiful bucolic landscapes, among others, the primary subjects of her work.
Grandma Moses was "discovered" in 1938 by an art collector. In 1939, she had three pieces exhibited in a show at the New York Museum of Modern Art. In 1940, she held her first solo show, "What A Farm Wife Painted," in New York. In 1949, President Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club Award for outstanding work in art. In 1950, the National Press Club cited her as one of the most newsworthy women. Eventually, her paintings would be exhibited across the United States and Europe. In 1946, the first book about Grandma Moses, "Grandma Moses, American Primitive," was published. Louis Bromfield wrote the introduction to this book, and Grandma Moses gave him two of her paintings.
Anna Mary Robertson Moses was quite prolific despite her age, producing more than 1,500 paintings. By the time she died in Hoosick Falls, New York, on December 13, 1961, she was considered the most famous American folk artist of the 20th century. She completed her last painting, "Rainbow," only six weeks before her death at 101.
- Adapted from research and text by Thomas Bachelder of the Malabar Farm FoundationLocation
Building
The Big HouseOhio State Park
Malabar Farm State Park