7 September: Grandma Moses

Today is Grandma Moses Day, which celebrates the American artist of that name, who was born on this date in 1860. 10 facts about her:

1. Her actual name was Anna Mary Robertson Moses. Born in Greenwich, New York, she had four sisters and five brothers. Her father was a farmer who ran a flax mill.

2. Her painting career didn’t begin until she was 78, but that didn’t mean she’d never painted at all before then. As a child, she would draw and paint on Paper her father bought for a penny a sheet. In those days she’d paint using Lemon juice, grass, ground ochre, Flour paste, slaked lime, and sawdust.

3. She only attended school briefly, but the school she went to is now a museum and has the largest collection of her works in the United States.

4. She entered domestic service at the age of 12. One of her employers encouraged her interest in art and bought her art materials.

5. She met her husband, Thomas Salmon Moses, at work – he was a hired hand at a farm where she worked. She met him at the age of 27. They had 10 children but only five survived. I’m guessing she didn’t have much time for painting at this time. Thomas died from a heart attack at 67. She continued to run the farm for a while with the help of one of her sons, but in due course retired and went to live with one of her daughters.

6. Before getting into painting, her hobby was Embroidery and quilting, making gifts for friends and family. She gave that up when arthritis made sewing too painful. Her sister suggested that painting might be easier, and the rest is history.

7. Initially, she sold her paintings in a local drug store for as little as $3 each. An art collector called Louis J. Caldor spotted her work in the window and bought up the lot. A year later, she had three paintings in New York's Museum of Modern Art as part of an exhibition called "Contemporary Unknown American Painters". Her first solo exhibition was in 1940, making her 79 or 80 years old at the time. It was in New York and called “What a Farm Wife Painted". Her exhibitions would also include samples of baked goods and preserves that she had made as well as the pictures.

8. One of her best known paintings is called Sugaring Off, a detailed scene featuring people boiling sap to create Maple syrup. This picture was made into a US postage stamp in 1969, and sold for $1.2 million in 2006. Her paintings were also used by Hallmark greetings cards.

9. Some critics dissed her for sprinkling glitter over winter scenes, because they thought it made her look amateurish. She stood her ground and carried on doing it, because she thought glitter captured the appearance of snow shimmering in sunlight.

10. Her autobiography, titled My Life's History, was published in 1952.