Grandma Moses Oil Painting "Village Scene"

Item Details

Grandma Moses (Anna Robertson) (New York/Virginia; 1860 – 1961)
Village Scene
Oil painting on board
Signed to lower left

An oil painting on masonite titled Village Scene by very well-listed American Folk artist Grandma Moses (New York/Virginia; 1860 – 1961). This painting depicts a bucolic Americana scene, rendered in Moses’ signature naive style and cheerful color palette. Tall leafy trees, silhouetted against the blue summer sky, march across the composition punctuated by crisp white houses. The work is signed to the lower left.

Provenance
Private collection, Cincinnati, OH
Purchased from Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 17, 2006

Grandma Moses, (Anna Mary Robertson) lived a simple rural life that was reflected in the folk art paintings that she became famous for late in her life. She left home at the age of twelve to work on a neighboring farm, married Thomas Moses in 1887, and after a period working in Virginia, settled with her husband onto their own farm in Eagle Bridge, New York. It wasn’t until after she retired from farm life and the death of her husband in 1927 that she devoted herself to painting. She began creating primitive narrative works that portrayed the simple life she had known. Her career was launched in 1938 when Louis Caldor, a collector from New York, happened upon her paintings in a local pharmacy. The following year her works were included in the exhibit Contemporary Unknown Painters at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and shortly after Otto Kallir, a Manhattan gallerist, produced her first solo show titled What a Farm Woman Painted. Grandma Moses’ celebrity grew, spurred by her charming, forthright personality, and her work that celebrated an idealized way of American life that was rapidly disappearing, eventually earning her a place as a cultural icon.

Her original paintings are held in many distinguished institutions including: the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont; the Brooklyn Museum, New York City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C; the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, and many others.

Condition

- to fair. Extensive craquelure across painting surface. Light yellowing to varnish. Minor wear to finish of frame.

Dimensions

- measures frame. Visible image measures 21.25" W x 8.75" H.

Item #

18CIN517-032