FONDLY called Grandma Moses, Anna Mary Robertson Moses was a symbol of creativity and courage. At the age of 78 years, when people begin looking towards their grave, Anna Mary began her career as a world famous artist. With an incredible imagination and determination, she became world famous by the age of 100 years.

Anna Mary Robertson was born in 1860, in a family of ten children. The family lived on a farm in New York state near Vermont border. The limited income of the family, compelled Anna to leave the house to earn a living. She was barely 12 years old then, and her formal education remained incomplete. She worked for various families until the age of 27 years, when she was married to Thomas Moses, a hired man, working on farms.

She moved to Virginia with her husband and continued working as a farm wife, working extra long hours to supplement the family income. She had many children of whom only five survived. Most of her life was spent washing, ironing, mending, baking, cleaning, sewing etc. After she lost her husband at the age of 70, she began making bright little pictures of wool sewn on canvas.

In 1938, when her arthritis worsened, she was advised to paint rather than stitch or embroider. Her first piece of painting was made of household paint and a piece of canvas left over from mending a threshing-machine cover. She entered her first painting in a local fair, along with some canned fruit and jam. The fruit and jam won a prize, but the paintings went unnoticed. Then she displayed them in a shop near Hoosick Falls, where they caught the attention of a middle-aged business man, Louis Calder. He bought all the four pieces displayed.

A year later, Anna met Otto Kallir, who gave her the opportunity to hold an exhibition. A day before the exhibition was held, a reporter of Herald Tribune gave a write-up on her work and referred to the new artist as Gradma Moses. The name clicked and thereafter everyone seemed to call her that. The exhibition was held on October 8, 1940, and ever since there was no looking back for Grandma Moses. She even began writing ‘Grandma Moses’ on nearly 400 Christmas cards that she painted. A greeting card firm sold more than 35 million Grandma Moses cards in 10 years. Contracts were made with fabric houses and in a span of three years, over 68 paintings were sold for prices up to $ 20,000.

Under Kallir’s able direction, a firm called Grandma Moses Properties was set up. It trademarked her name and got a copyright for her pictures and sold reproduction rights. A percentage of every dollar went to Anna. Grandma Moses received almost a quarter of a million dollars in royalties. She was honoured, exhibited and above all, dearly loved by all her buyers and admirers. She basked in fame, yet she continued her frugal way of life. She continued to use old coffee tins to store paint, old cold-cream jars to soak brushes in and often wore out a brush to a stub, and also worked out the frame, and other material as economically as possible. But this did not make her compromise with perfection. Large sums of money did not attract her, it just flowed in without her desiring it. Her paintings were refreshing to the eye, simple yet immensely appealing, at times without mastered perspective or proportion yet so captivating that all imperfections and technical oddities were ignored. Anna neither attended any painting school nor had any training. Her fame reached Europe, and in Moscow, 100,000 people went to see her exhibitions. (Kallir organised the exhibition). Her paintings found a place in the White House, and also the Muse National d’ Art Moderne in Paris. On her 100th birthday, greetings flooded in from all over the world.

In 1961, Anna died at the age of 101 years the news splashed across the front pages of the newspapers in Europe and America. It’s incredible how one can begin at the age of 78, an age when most people begin closing their life’s chapter.