Art: Presents from Grandma

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In the sunny front room of a trim ranch house in Upper New York State, a sprightly little old lady sat working one day last week, an array of paint tubes on the table in front of her. Through the window she could see the fallow corn and tomato fields falling away to the Hoosic River, which curves northwest toward the hamlet of Eagle Bridge (pop. 250). Sycamores edged the riverbank; the hills beyond were quilted with thick-ranked birch and maple trees and patches of frosty pasture land. Anna Mary Robertson Moses —better known around the globe as “Grandma Moses”—sketched in the line of distant hills on a piece of white-coated Masonite. Then she dipped her brush —worn down to the barest bristle—in a can lid of turpentine and rubbed it on the mouth of a tube of burnt umber.

Peering through her spectacles, chatting as she worked, she added some ungainly vertical strokes of brown in the right foreground, explaining: “This is a butternut tree. When I was a girl there was a butternut tree way down yonder by the river. I used to go down and gather the nuts.” She smeared green on the brush and began daubing in leaves. “This is what I like this brush for—you can make leaves so easy with it. Now I’ll put on some yellowish green, and whitish green, like you see on the undersides when the wind blows them.”

Pointing to the center of the panel, she announced: “There’ll be an old mill there, and I guess I’ll have some oxen goin’ to the mill with a load of grain.” Tapping her forehead, she added: “I can see the whole picture right here.”

The Oldtimy Things. In the years since she first started painting these rosy visions of her imagination, Grandma Moses has earned a unique place in the hearts of millions, and in the history of American art. Her paintings (more than 1,500 by her own count) have been shown in more than 160 U.S. exhibitions, and in five one-man shows abroad. She is represented in nine American museums and in Vienna’s State Gallery; hers is the only “Ecole Americaine” picture hanging in Paris’ Museum of Modern Art. Grandma’s originals—priced at $150 to $3,000 each —hang on the walls of such discriminating collectors as Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, Katharine Cornell and Thomas J. Watson. Reproductions of her work have entered thousands of less famed American homes, along with Grandma Moses china, fabrics, tiles, and, most of all, Christmas cards. Altogether some 48 million of her cards have been sold in the U.S. Next year, for the first time, they will also be printed in Vienna and distributed in 15 European countries.

The secret of Grandma’s success lies partly in her back-door approach to painting. Most painters make a great display of devoting their lives to art. Grandma Moses, who did not even think of painting seriously until she was 76, devotes her art to her life. It is commemoration, celebration and thanks for the blessings of her many fruitful years. The results (opposite) are as cheery, nostalgic yet commonsensical as Grandma herself. Says she: “I like to paint oldtimy things—something real pretty. Most of them are daydreams, as it were.” Then she smiles and adds reflectively: “I will say that I have did remarkable for one of my years and experience.”

Varnish & Hemlock. Last week Grandma was busily preparing for her own 94th Christmas. She had sent out some 400 cards, penning “Grandma Moses” on each with slow, even strokes of her gnarled hand. Most of her cards went to people who had sent her one the year before. She had carefully clipped the return address from each envelope, and saved it for this Christmas. Some of the cards she sent were reproductions of her paintings, but many were cheaper ones she bought at a church benefit. Grandma frugally cut in two the folding cards with pictures on both parts.

Grandma has decided to have a goose this Christmas, and of course a Christmas tree. One of her great-grandsons—probably eleven-year-old Tom—will go out and cut down a hemlock for her. On Christmas Eve, choral singers will come to her door, and Grandma will give them candy or prunes. Next morning she will have presents for all her 19 great-grandchildren —small trinkets she has saved over the year.

Thinking of Christmas always reminds Grandma of “the smell of hemlock and the smell of varnish.” Hemlock is for all the Christmas trees of years past; varnish is for the shining toys. Grandma’s main present to her own children at Christmas was always an old hobbyhorse, repainted and left by Kris Kringle each year. Originally it had been dapple-grey, but it returned year after year repainted in all shades and hues.

In those days the Christmas tree was decorated with strings of popcorn and “cat-stairs” made of colored paper. Amidst the branches would shine a few oranges —a wonderful treasure. There would also be a knife, a comb, or a jew’s-harp for the children, along with the hobbyhorse.

Hog-killing traditionally came just before Christmas, and that meant big, juicy spareribs and sausage cakes. “We used to tell people, ‘Come and see us during the Christmas.’ Why, we’d keep the table set with plates, ready for anybody to come in and eat, until New Year’s.” Says Grandma: “Christmas is not just one day.”

Back in the Meadows. Grandma’s first Christmas was spent “back in the green meadows and wild woods on a farm in Washington County,” not far from her present home. She was one of ten children of a frugal farm family. Her ancestry was “Scotch, Irish, English, French and Indian, and.” says Grandma, “that’s a good combination, isn’t it?” She also takes gentle pride in the fact that one of her great-grandfathers fought in the American Revolution and left a powder horn with the inscription:

Hezekiah King.

Ticonderoga. Feb. 24th 1777 Steal not this horn for fear of shame For on it is the owner’s name.

Grandma’s earliest artistic effort was painting paper dolls (with her mother’s bluing for the eyes and grape juice for the lips) and making dresses for them of colored paper. One winter her father was ill and passed the time painting a landscape around the walls of a room. Little Anna Mary “got into” the paints. She remembers making “some ‘very pretty lamb-scapes,’ as my brothers said I called them,” on scraps of slate, wood and glass. “Father would say, ‘Oh, not so bad.’ But Mother was more practical, thought that I could spend my time other ways.”

Among the “other ways” were ordinary household chores, plus candlemaking, soapmaking and dressmaking. “Little girls did not go to school much in winter,” Grandma recalls, “owing to the cold and not warm enough clothing.” Therefore she got only “through the Sixth Reader.”

The cold did not stop the children’s play. Remembering those days in her autobiography,* she exulted: “Wintertime! When zero stands at 25 or 30, when we cannot deny the pleasure of skating till we have bumped heads, and bleedy noses, and the ice is like glass. Oh what joy and pleasure as we get together, to go for the Christmas tree, what air castles we build as we slide down the hill, who can rebuild what we see on that Christmas tree. Oh, those days of childhood!”

To the Ridgepole. Even in those days, playing with her brothers, Grandma made a habit of excelling. “If they’d climb up a tree,” she says, “I’d climb higher. They weren’t goin’ to outdo me. If they’d climb to the eaves of a house, I’d climb to the ridgepole.”

Grandma’s childhood was brief. “When twelve years of age,” she recalls, “I left home to earn my own living as what then was called a hired girl. This was a grand education for me, in cooking, house keeping, in moralizing and mingling with the outside world.” After 15 years of this education she met and married a farmhand named Thomas Salmon Moses. She remembers, with the certainty of true love, that he was “a wonderful man, much better than I am.”

In her autobiography, Grandma gives a memorable description of her wedding outfit : “A going-away costume of a very dark green dress, and jacket the same, a hat, the same, trimmed with a pink feather. The first thing I had on was a chemise, then my corsets, a corset waist, a pair of pantsies, a little flannel skirt, the bustle, a white skirt, then the dress. The dress was made with a skirt lining and wigging stitched on up to the knees, and the dress cloth went over that, a long skirt reaching to the floor. Then an overskirt over that, that reached the floor and was tucked up on the sides and the top. Long stockings, black, and high-buttoned shoes . . . Then I had a stiff high collar and white linen cuffs. My dress was all braided in the front, and the long jacket I wore, that was also braided. We bought the braid in patterns. My gloves were tan-colored, doe skin, they called them. And then, the ring.”

Some Sit Down. “I believed when we started out,” says Grandma, “that we were a team and I had to do as much as my husband did, not like some girls, they sit down, and then somebody has to throw sugar at them.”

With $600 in savings, the young couple traveled south and rented a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. In that valley, Grandma bore ten children and raised the five that survived birth. There, too, she supplemented the family income by making butter and potato chips (a novelty in those times) for sale to the neighbors.

After 18 years in the South, the Moses family moved north again to Eagle Bridge, N.Y. and began a dairy farm there. The children grew up and married. In 1927 Grandma’s husband died.

Two of her sons had started nearby farms of their own; Grandma’s youngest stayed on with her. The grandchildren, and then great-grandchildren, gave her increasing pleasure. She occupied herself with making worsted pictures (of yarn drawn through netting) until arthritis made handling the needle too difficult.

Says Grandma: “I used to wrap my hands up in scarves and lay them on a chair beside the bed. at night. I couldn’t sleep on account of the aching, just like a toothache. Then, one night I got desperate, so I got up and hunted the doctor book, the ‘Family Adviser, Philosophy of Diseases.’ The best recipe was:3 cups of sweet milk every day, and from 3 to 5 drops of turpentine in it. I took it for about three months, and all of a sudden there were no pains any more, but the hardness of the joints stayed.”

“Shake, Shake, Shake.” It was Grandma’s sister Celestia who first suggested that painting might be fun for her. Grandma tried, and found it was. “I painted for pleasure, to keep busy and to pass the time away,” she recalls, “but I thought no more of it than of doing fancy work.”

When Grandma was finally persuaded to send some of her pictures to a country fair, along with canned fruits and jam, her preserves won prizes but her paintings attracted little attention. Not long after, however, a drugstore in the nearby town of Hoosick Falls, N.Y. put some of her pictures in the window. There they were spotted by a Manhattan collector named Louis Caldor. He bought them all and began trying to interest New York art dealers in Grandma’s work. Finally he tried the newly opened Galerie St. Etienne, run by a solemn Viennese expatriate named Otto Kallir, who fell hard for the pictures. Dealer Kallir put Grandma under contract, and her first big show, in 1940, lit the match to a bonfire of public enthusiasm which has been crackling brightly ever since.

Grandma’s next show was held at Gimbels department store, which invited her down for the opening. Grandma had not been in Manhattan for years; she later described her visit: “Oh, it was shake hands, shake, shake, shake—and I wouldn’t even know the people now. My, my, it was rush here, rush there, rush every other place—but I suppose I shouldn’t say that because those people did go to so much bother to make my visit pleasant.” A sizable audience gathered at Gimbels to hear Grandma talk about painting. Instead, she told them in detail how she made preserves, and concluded her talk by opening her handbag and showing a few samples. No one could possibly have invented an old lady more refreshing to a jaded urban public.

Doctor Without Cap. In the past dozen years, honors have been heaped upon Grandma Moses. Russell Sage College made her an honorary doctor of humane letters (“Only they didn’t let me keep the cap”). She has been given the keys to the city of Albany. President Truman once presented her with an award (“I talked with him, and I could not think but that he was one of my own boys”). General Eisenhower sent her a card from Europe reading: “For Grandma Moses, a real artist, from a rank amateur.”

Professional critics have praised her just as warmly. Oddly enough, U.S. critics were, and still are, inclined to temper their praise with a touch of condescension. They note her obvious limitations of draftsmanship and range, and only then admit her ability to evoke atmosphere and create lively scenes. But the European reaction has been full-out. A Zurich critic speaks of her “magic spontaneity . . . completely unsentimental, and as untouched as nature herself … a phenomenon of our times.” Paris’ Arts votes “thanks to Grandma Moses for the happiness she shows us.” Vienna-born Otto ‘ Kallir flatly insists that Grandma is “one of the very great painters in America today.” In his opinion she outranks even Henri Rousseau, the Paris customs inspector who was the first modern “primitive” painter to be revered by connoisseurs.

Realism Without Exactitude. Ever since Rousseau’s sophisticated friends—Picasso, Braque & Co.—began promoting him at the turn of the century, primitive art has been a subject of controversy. In the first place, few can agree on just what the word is meant to cover. Two things it always stands for are an untrained hand and a childlike eye. Primitives are would-be realists whose charm depends on their very inability to paint photographically accurate pictures. Most of them have trouble with figures (as does Grandma) and make a habit of cluttering their canvases with niggling details (as Grandma does not). Very few have Grandma’s luminosity of color, and almost none can match her in creating an illusion of deep space.

Because of these qualities, Kallir believes that the word primitive does not apply to her. He urges “natural” as a substitute. Expert Sidney Janis (to whom she dedicated the painting on page 40) thinks “self-taught” a better word. Grandma herself is not worried about such intellectual distinctions. Grandma simply aims to please.

“As for publicity,” says Grandma, “that I’m too old to care for now.” The present-day realities of life amidst her family are still what matter most to her. Some 30-odd descendants and in-laws live nearby, and her eldest daughter, Winona, shares Grandma’s house. The low, efficient, L-shaped structure—with picture windows, false shutters, garage and freezer—was put up for her by Grandma’s son Forrest and two grandsons. They took the plan from a magazine illustration and finished building it two years ago.

Secluded Sunshine. At 93, Grandma still “makes a batch” of three or four pictures almost every week. She paints each day until she begins to tire: “Then I leave it to do something else; when my hand gets tired, it isn’t so stiddy.” Sometimes Grandma turns to television, “though it’s gettin’ to be monotonous,” or more likely just chats with Winona. Grandma’s hearing is perfect, and she says, “I love the gossip.” Now & then she entertains her neighboring great-grandchildren who “come troopin’ acrost the field, lookin’ like Coxey’s Army.”

For breakfast and lunch she has coffee and oatmeal, “with lots of sugar—that’s for vitality.” Her dinners are hearty. “Good eatin’s and good keepin’s” is Grandma’s recipe for health. At 10 o’clock Grandma is ready for bed: “The minute my head hits the pillow I’m dead to the world.” She sleeps on an old feather tick under an electric blanket.

For her years, Grandma is in fabulously good fettle, though she does complain that her feet “get clumpy” when she walks. A neighboring doctor drops by twice a week just to keep tabs on her. When people tease her about his being a beau, Grandma points out that “he’s 15 years younger than me.” The doctor is round in the middle, and, says Grandma, “he wouldn’t have such a pot on him if he’d just lay down on the floor and roll over like he did when he was three years old and I first knew him.”

Grandma’s great and utterly unexpected fame, coming at the close of such a long, useful life, pleases her mainly for the personal contacts it brings her, and bothers her only because it brings too many. A “Do Not Disturb” sign from a hotel room hangs outside her front door to ward off the thousands of tourists who besiege her sunny old age. Yet those who get past that printed plea find that Grandma’s main interest, now as ever, is people. Recently a visitor asked the radiant little old lady of what she was proudest after her 93 years of life and labor. The answer could not have been more Christian, or more grandmotherly: “I’ve helped some people.”

* Grandma Moses, My Life’s History (Harper & Bros., $3.50).