International Art Treasures Web Magazine

May 2006  

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Designs on the Heart

Grandma Moses is Americana at its finest. The story is well-known and told with relish. She didn't begin to paint until she was seventy-five years old. She took up painting because arthritis made her preferred needlework crafts too painful to complete. Never idle she picked up a brush and the rest is history.

There is so much more to Grandma Moses that that simple story. Anna Mary Robertson Moses, nicknamed "Grandma" was born on September 7, 1860. James Buchanan was the President. In the 1860 federal election Abraham Lincoln was elected as the President of the United States of America, taking office on March 4, 1861. When she died on December 13, 1961 John F. Kennedy was in the White House.

At first she copied known scenes such as the Currier&Ives prints. Some may regard this as sacrilege. It is the way the great artists learned. They would copy the masters such as Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Michelangelo before developing their own style.

Designs on the Heart brings Grandma Moses the woman into perspective as an artist. She may have been a millionaire but she didn't alter her studio or her style. She was unique as the American leader in the field of naive art.

The country lady held her own in an interview with famed journalist Edward R. Murrow. Norman Rockwell included her in his famous work Christmas Homecoming. In the left looking at the man returning who is engulfed in a warm embrace stands Grandma Moses. To the right also looking at the homecoming is Norman Rockwell himself, smoking a pipe.

Karal Ann Marling curated the exhibit Grandma Moses: Grandmother to the Nation scheduled to open at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Designs on the Heart is the companion piece to the exhibit.