Vintage Photo Archive Grandma Moses Folk Art Artist Photograph Collection, 1940's-1960's

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Group of original vintage color and black and white photographs related to Grandma Moses. Dimensions: Largest is 6 X 8 … Read more Group of original vintage color and black and white photographs related to Grandma Moses. Dimensions: Largest is 6 X 8 with mat. the rest are smaller. There are a total of photos. most with hand inscriptions and dated verso. They are not signed. Provenance: the collection of the Beers family and is from the estate. Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860 – 1961), or 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 gained popularity during the 1950s, having been featured on a cover of Time Magazine in 1953. She was a subject of numerous television programs and of a 1950 Oscar-nominated biographical documentary. Her autobiography, titled My Life's History, was published in 1952. She was also awarded two honorary doctoral degrees. She embroidered pictures with yarn, until disabled by arthritis. In her 1961 obituary, The New York Times said: "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. A tiny, lively woman with mischievous gray eyes and a quick wit, she could be sharp-tongued with a sycophant and stern with an errant grandchild." Moses's work has been a subject of numerous museum exhibitions worldwide and has been extensively merchandised, such as on greeting cards. In 2006, her 1943 painting titled Sugaring Off was sold at Christie's New York for US$1.36 million, setting an auction record for the artist. Her work is fundamental for any Naive art or Americana collection. 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. As a young wife and mother, Moses was creative in her home; for example, in 1918 she used house paint to decorate a fireboard. Beginning in 1932, Moses used yarn to embroider pictures for friends and family. She created quilt objects, a form of "hobby art". Lucy R. Lippard stated in "The Word in Their Hands" that she found "hobby art" to be "an activity so 'low' on the art lists that it still ranks way below 'folk art'". She found that hobby art often involves reuse of otherwise discarded objects. Moses painted scenes of rural life from earlier days, which she called "old-timey" New England landscapes. Moses said that she would "get an inspiration and start painting; 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." From her works of art, she omitted features of modern life, such as tractors and telephone poles. Her early style is less individual and more realistic or primitive, with a lack of knowledge of, or perhaps rejection of, basic perspective. Initially she created simple compositions or copied existing images. As her career advanced, she created complicated, panoramic compositions of rural life. During a visit to Hoosick Falls in 1938, Louis J. Caldor, an art collector who worked as an engineer in the state of New York, saw paintings made by Moses in the window of a drug store. He bought their supply and ten more from her Eagle Bridge house for $3 or $5 each. The next year, three Grandma Moses paintings were included in New York's Museum of Modern Art exhibition titled "Contemporary Unknown American Painters". Her first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted", opened in New York in October 1940 at Otto Kallir's Galerie St. Etienne. A meet-and-greet with the artist and an exhibition of 50 paintings at Gimbel's Department Store was held next on November 15. 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, she 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. Otto Kallir established the Grandma Moses Properties, Inc. for her. The paintings of Grandma Moses were used to publicize American holidays, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother's Day. A Mother's Day feature in True Confessions (1947) written by Eleanor Early noted how "Grandma Moses remains prouder of her preserves than of her paintings, and proudest of all of her four children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren." During the 1950s, her exhibitions broke attendance records around the world. Art historian Judith Stein noted: "A cultural icon, the spry, productive nonagenarian was continually cited as an inspiration for housewives, widows and retirees." Her paintings were reproduced on Hallmark greeting cards, tiles, fabrics,[3] and ceramics. They were also used to market products, like coffee, lipstick, cigarettes, and cameras. In 1950, the National Press Club cited her as one of the five most newsworthy women and the National Association of House Dress Manufacturers honored her as their 1951 Woman of the Year. When she reached 88, Mademoiselle magazine named her a "Young Woman of the Year". She was awarded two honorary doctoral degrees. The first was bestowed in 1949 from Russell Sage College and the second two years later from the Moore College of Art and Design. President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women's National Press Club trophy Award for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949. Jerome Hill directed the 1950 documentary of her life, which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1952, she published her autobiography, My Life's History. In it she said "I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be." In 1955, she appeared as a guest on See It Now, a television program hosted by Edward R. Murrow. She was a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants and Daughters of the American Revolution. Her 100th birthday was proclaimed "Grandma Moses Day" by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. LIFE magazine celebrated her birthday by featuring her on its September 19, 1960, cover. The children's book Grandma Moses Story Book was published in 1961. Grandma Moses died at age 101 on December 13, 1961, at the Health Center in Hoosick Falls, New York. She is buried there at the Maple Grove Cemetery. President John F. Kennedy memorialized her: "The death of Grandma Moses removed a beloved figure from American life. The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene. Both her work and her life helped our nation renew its pioneer heritage and recall its roots in the countryside and on the frontier. All Americans mourn her loss." After her death, her work was exhibited in several large traveling exhibitions in the United States and abroad. The 1969 U.S. postage stamp honoring Grandma Moses. It shows a detail of her painting July Fourth, which the White House owns. A 1942 piece, The Old Checkered House, 1862, was appraised at the Memphis 2004 Antiques Roadshow. It was not as common as her winter landscapes. Originally purchased in the 1940s for under $10, the piece was assigned an insurance value of $60,000 by the appraiser, Alan Fausel. In November 2006, her 1943 work Sugaring Off became her highest-selling work at US $1.2 million. Otto Kallir of the Galerie St. Etienne gave her painting July Fourth (1951) to the White House as a gift in 1952. The painting also appears on a U.S. commemorative stamp that was issued in Grandma Moses's honor in 1969. The character Daisy "Granny" Moses (Irene Ryan) on The Beverly Hillbillies, was named as an homage to Grandma Moses, who died shortly before the series began. Norman Rockwell and Grandma Moses were friends who lived across the Vermont–New York state border from each other. Moses lived in Eagle Bridge, New York, and after 1938 the Rockwells had a house in nearby Arlington, Vermont. She appears on the far left edge in the Norman Rockwell painting Christmas Homecoming, which was printed on The Saturday Evening Post's December 25, 1948, cover. Collections This is a selection of the public collections of her work: Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont, holds the largest public collection of Moses's paintings Brooklyn Museum, New York City Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY 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 See less