A Depiction of Rural Life in Grandma Moses’ Folk Art Paintings

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A Depiction of Rural Life in Grandma Moses’ Folk Art Paintings

Grandma Moses, A Country Wedding, 1951, oil on pressed wood, Bennington Museum, Museum purchase, 1998.79.

Famously known as Grandma Moses, American folk artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961) had a huge, and often unacknowledged, impact on American arts and culture. Frequently used as a prime example that it's never too late, the 79-year-old splashed onto the art scene in 1939, with three works in MOMA’s group show Contemporary Unknown American Painters, followed by a solo exhibition at Otto Kallir's New York Galerie St. Etienne in 1940. Dubbed “Grandma Moses” by a New York Herald Tribune reviewer after an art event at Gimbels department store, Moses painted over 1,500 paintings and achieved international fame, exhibiting all over the world until well into her 90’s. She continued painting until just a few months before her death, at 101.

Hildegard Bachert, Grandma Mose sat Work, 1958.

An exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work, examines the impact of this beloved painter on the cultural imagination. Comprising 88 works, the exhibition includes many of Moses’ most celebrated paintings and explores Moses’ life, her artistic evolution, and her transformation from farm wife to famous artist in Cold War America, illustrated with photographs, ephemera, and Moses’ own words— drawn largely from her autobiography.

Running October 24 through July 12, 2026, the exhibition will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art following its premiere in Washington, D.C. “Grandma Moses was instrumental in bringing self-taught art to the forefront of American consciousness,” says Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Leslie Umberger, Senior Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art, adds that Moses’ art and life were “shaped by ingenuity, labor, a doggedly positive outlook, and a distilled understanding of a life well lived."

Courtesy Kallir Research Institute, New York, © Grandma Moses Properties Co., NY. Courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Grandma Moses, The Spring in the Evening, 1947, oil on high-density fiberboard, Private collection.

An ‘outsider’ artist considered an example of ‘modern primitivism,’ Moses was primarily self-taught. Raised on a farm in Greenwich, New York, Moses worked as a hired girl, helping neighbors and relatives with cleaning, cooking, and sewing. Encouraged by her father to draw as a child, she used fruit juices to color her images and loved creating embroidered pictures for friends and family. Moses didn’t begin painting seriously until her late 70’s, when arthritis made embroidery no longer feasible. Using easily available materials, Moses painted one of her first paintings– a woodland scene– on a fireboard.

Married at 27, Moses moved with her husband to Shenandoah Valley, where they lived, worked, and raised a family in post-Reconstruction Virginia. Her paintings draw on family and local lore, merging memory and history, fact and imagination. Moses painted the forested rolling hills of the Shenandoah Valley and New York, depicting day-to-day farm activities such as "sugaring off" (preparing maple syrup), holiday gatherings, and historic events, while mostly omitting evidence of industrialization, such as telephone poles.

She started out displaying her paintings alongside her prize-winning fruit preserves at country fairs. In 1938, a collector saw her paintings displayed at a local pharmacy and bought them all, some of which were featured in the 1939 MOMA exhibition. Two years later, art dealer Kallir– who had recently immigrated from Austria, fleeing the Nazi regime— hosted Moses’ first solo exhibition. Her distinctive style captured the nation’s imagination. The post-WWII United States embraced Moses as a global ambassador for democratic American values, enchanted by her unpretentious scenes of rural life. With her art chosen for postage stamps and Hallmark cards, Grandma Moses became a household name, gaining a celebrity status surpassing that of her female contemporaries and rivaling the fame of current artists today. However, her very popularity made many in the art world less inclined to take her seriously, writing her off as a folksy grandma.

Grandma Moses, Checkered House, 1955, oil and glitter on high-density fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Kallir Family in memory of Otto and Fanny Kallir, 2023.44.

Painting in a realistic, observational style, generally without basic perspective, Moses created panoramic landscapes and detailed depictions of rural life, often using a collage method– tracing figures and buildings from postcards or magazine clippings and transferring them to her canvas using carbon paper. Her compositions reflected modernist trends while her artworks evoked a mythic country life, opening a window into the creative artistry of rural life.

*Due to the federal government shutdown, the Smithsonian, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, are currently closed. Programs, tours, and events at the museum are canceled. For updates, visit si.edu.