UNTAUGHT GENIUS OF GRANDMA MOSES

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5327, 13 February 1947, Page 3

UNTAUGHT GENIUS OF GRANDMA MOSES

♦ FAMOUS PAINTER SELLS PRICELESS LANDSCAPES WITH POTS OF JAM Art collectors in America to-day are eagerly buying- canvases by an old lady of 86 who was never tauglit to paint and did not try seriously until she uras 77. She is Mrs. Anna Mary Robertson Moses, unually called Grandma Moses. Six years ago she was living placidly on her son's farm in a remote corner of !New York State unknown to the outer world. To-day, her paintings hang in many of America's greatest museums and private collections; The dealers who pad round the heavily carpeted art salons of 57th Street, New York, now discuss the fine points of a Grandma Moses as earnestly as those of a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Rise in Fame. Her sudden fame began in 1940, when Louis Caldor, a New York colleiitor, was passing thro'Ugih the little town of Hoosick Falls, N.Y. In a drug store window he saw some landscape paintings that astonished him by their freshness and beauty. The storekeeper told him they were by a Mrs. Moses, who lived in the district. Caldor went out to the family farm to see her. He found Grandma Moses a forthright old lady with a sen'se of humour still in lively possession of her faculties. She told him she had begun painting local scenes as a hobby three years before. She •sold her pictures along with the jams and preserves she made during the summer. Their priees were fixed aceording to the size of the canvases. Caldor persuaded Grandma Moses to let him take some of her paintings to New York, where he put them on exhibition. The critics, the public and j the Press were delighted. One of the j chief entuhisasts was Louis Bromfield, | the novelist. A farmer himself, Brom- j field was enchanted by the accuraey of her farm pictures as well as by their colour and design. Jam Before Art. Another exhibition of her paintings was held at Gimbels department store in New York and Grandma Moses was invited to the opening. It was the first time in 30 years that she had been to New York. Before several hundred people pre- I sent at the opening the old lady was persuaded to make a little speech. But she did not speak about art. She gave a talk 011 jam ma'king and produced from her handbag some jars of jam which she offered as samples. All attempts to bring her round to the subject of painting failed. Grandma Moses began to receive fan mail from all over America. People who bad seen reproductions of her pictures wrote asking her to make copies of them. She worked hard to fill these orders, but the demand grew too much for her to supply. To satisfy public curiosity Grandma Moses was persuaded to write a short account of her life. Born in 1S60, she had very little sehooling and cannot spell very v/ell. She says she left home at 12 years of age to work as a hired girl for some people who cared for her "as a child of thair one." She marri.ed a farmer at 27 and had 10 children; and, she adds, "I left five little graves in that beautiful Shenandoah Valley." Her whole life has been spent on farms. She paints only the country life she knows and loves — farm scenes in New York State or Vermont, v/ith titles like "Children Skating," "Out for the Christmas Trees," and "Catching the Thanksgiving Turkey." All details are set down with careful accuracy, though the pictures are done "from memory," because Grandma Moses is^ too old to set up her easel out of dooi\j. She works in an •upper room in her so'n's farmhouse, sitting on a straight chair with copies of the Sears Roebuek inail-order catalogue underneath her to give a few inches extra height.jShe paints in oils on thick cardboar.d. Critics class Grandma Moses as a "primitive" painter because slie has never had art lessons and has never been to museums to see the work of the masters. The drawing of many details in her pictures is naive, though this takes nothing from their charm. U nsophisticated Work. From picture postcards and -magazine illustrations she has picked up some notions of perspective. Bufc otherwise her painting is completely unsophisticated. She sticks "glitter" on some of her winter landseapes to make the snow look real. By intuitive g'ift, Grandma ' Moses combines bright colours with exquisite effect. But what captivates city-dwell-ers is the purity and freshness of ihe country atmosphere in her' pictures. She paints farm life not as a visitor from an art studio, but as someone who belongs there. The feverish, mechanised existence of many Americans has put them into a nostalgic mood. In the paintings of this old country woman they see an ancient, simple, tranquil way of life. They see it heau'tifully revealed by some who has known it a long time, and has known nothing else. That is the explanation of the boom in Grandma Moses.