I found at the second-hand bookstore Books for Dogs (but you can also discover great used clothes, shoes, objects for your house at a very cheap price) located in Umbertide and created for helping dogs of various local realities an used book pretty touching, beautiful and extraordinary: Grandma Moses Painter by Tom Biracree Introductory Essay by Matina S. Horner President, Radcliffe College. This biography is part of American Women of Achievement, a collection of 50 books dedicated to the most important ladies who made the difference in the USA published by Chelsea House Publishers.Anna Mary Robertson was born close to New York in 1860 in a family of farmers. It meant to her a lot of chores and the understanding of the diversified works of a farm.
Anna Mary left her house at 12 years.
Employed at the Whitesides, a rich couple of farmers, childless, she spent there difficult years.
Later, she married Thomas Salmon Moses with which she decided to start an existence in a beauty and big farm in Virginia.
Grandma Moses has had a lot of children; some of them as it happened during that hard times died before to become adults; she was busy, and extra-busy with every kind of chores but in particular with her...butter. Yes, because with the time, her excellent product started to be appreciated, sold and very request with great success.
With a life like this one there was no time for painting, but after the sudden departure of her husband, after that she helped the family of her daughter, disappeared abruptly, at the age of 70s she started it as a form of relaxation.
Her luck and her becoming Grandma Moses as the public knows her, maybe the most loved and appreciated painter of the USA, thanks to a man, Louis Caldor, an engineer.
He stopped for eating something at Hoosick Falls, a little reality close to Albany,noticing in that local some paintings of Grandma Moses. He started to ask questions of this painter. Who the painter was and so on, fascinated by the simplicity and purity and what he was seeing.
The owner at the drugstore was not so encouraging in this sense: he told him that no one after all appreciated that paintings, or made any kind of great remarks, compliments for their existence in his store. But mr.Caldor knew something else: that a new talent would have been brought at light pretty soon.
He talked with Grandma Moses, asking for more paintings, and from there, and thanks to a big launch in a prestigious art exhibit in NYC, the celebrity "Grandma Moses" became reality. Loved by everyone, including all the American Presidents, stars, Hallmark launched pretty soon greeting cards of Grandma Moses's landscapes.
After all, Grandma Moses arrived in the scene in a particular moment: the end of the last Second World War conflict: who, better than her could speak at the heart of Americans who wanted to put behind them that conflict? She was pacific, sober, at the same time, a tranquil, fervid, wise lady. The best example and the best encouraging answer for a Nation in search of peace. A radiant example.
Her paintings, with which in most of them she represented the places where she lived in, enchanted everyone for their simplicity and because they reached the heart of people.
Grandma Moses promised to everyone that she would have reached 100 years and she maintained this promise! Stubborn, she wouldn't never wanted to abandon her beloved house as it happened the latest months of her existence, and once she died in 1961 it was a terrible departure for everyone.
This lady is an example: Grandma Moses suffered of a lot of bones pain caused by the massive chores she did when she was young, a common problem for farmers, but she continued to create her paintings with joy, satisfaction, humility, surrounded by the love of a country in love for her and later, by the entire world.
Highly highly recommended. To everyone.
Anna Maria Polidori
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