Grandma Moses (American, 1860-1961). The Old Carriage, August 2, 1955. Oil on Masonite. 16 x 18 inches (40.6 x 45.7 cm)...

Description

Grandma Moses (American, 1860-1961)
The Old Carriage, August 2, 1955
Oil on Masonite
16 x 18 inches (40.6 x 45.7 cm)
Signed lower right: Moses
Dated, titled, and numbered on artist's label affixed to the reverse: Aug 2, 1955 / 1680 / Old Carriage

PROVENANCE:
The Galerie St. Etienne, New York;
Hammer Galleries, New York;
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1973.

EXHIBITED:
The Galerie St. Etienne, New York, and elsewhere, "Grandma Moses 1860-1961 Memorial Exhibition," November 1962-1963, No. 6 (as Uncle Archibald).

LITERATURE:
O. Kallir, Grandma Moses, New York, 1973, p. 315, pl. 1191, illustrated.

A sense of time and place is a distinctive quality of the folk paintings of Grandma (Anna Robertston) Moses, the New York farm wife who first took up a brush in her seventies and became world-famous by the time of her death in 1961 at age 101. In her autobiography, My Life's History, Grandma Moses recounts how an art collector's serendipitous discovery of her paintings in a pharmacy in Hoosick Falls led to a gallery exhibition in New York City. She also describes how in 1887, she and her husband, Thomas Moses, moved to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where they raised five children; they would return to Eagle Bridge, New York, in 1905 to run a dairy farm, Mt. Nebo, on the Hoosick River. These various homesteads, and their surrounding hamlets, farms, churches, mills, and historic sites, form the visual and symbolic framework for Grandma Moses's paintings; to these landscapes, she added people happily engaged in rural activities, whether harvesting, sugaring off maple syrup, or attending the county fair. It was not simply the charming, primitive style of her paintings -- composed like patchwork quilts -- but also their evocation of a simpler, bygone era that attracted her early patrons and helped catapult her into the limelight. The Old Carriage is a wonderful example of Grandma Moses's signature and was exhibited at the Galerie St. Etienne's memorial exhibition following the artist's death.

More information about Grandma Moses. See also: Moses, Grandma, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, Moses, Anna Mary Robertson, Robertson, Anna Mary Artist.

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