We often hear the phrase, "it's too late to start." However, Anna Mary Robertson Moses took up her brush at the age of 78—and proceeded to take the world by storm.
Born in 1860 into a large farming family, Anna loved to draw from her earliest childhood. Lacking both canvas and paint, she improvised with whatever was at hand, using berry juice, grape juice, chalk, and charcoal. Her earliest sketches appeared on wooden boards and scraps of wallpaper. Yet, in the unforgiving rural landscape of the late 19th century, there was simply no room for art. By the age of 12, Anna was already sent away to work as a domestic servant on a neighboring farm just to earn her keep. Consequently, her creative dreams were pushed aside for decades.
At 27, she married a farmer named Thomas Moses, eventually giving birth to ten children, though only five survived infancy. Anna became the quintessential farm wife, spending her days boiling soap, churning butter, and working the fields. Though she occasionally tried to reach for a pencil, she was met with a wall of incomprehension. Her husband and relatives dismissed her drawing as a whim and a total waste of time. "Why paint what's already right in front of your eyes? Go do something useful," they would tell her. Bound by duty to her family, Anna tucked her brushes away once more.
The turning point arrived when she was well into her sixties. At 67, her husband passed away suddenly. With the farm handed over to her son and her adult children living their own lives, Anna found herself alone in an empty house. To combat the crushing grief and loneliness, she began embroidering pictures with wool yarn. However, at age 76, severe arthritis stiffened her fingers. Keeping a needle became impossible.
It seemed her final comfort had been snatched away. But her sister offered a simple suggestion: "If you can’t embroider anymore, why not try painting?"
Anna purchased a set of the cheapest oil paints and an easel. Then, something miraculous happened: instead of painting the view from an old woman's window, she began painting the memories she had carried in her heart all her life. She depicted the "good old days" of her youth—sleigh rides, maple syrup harvests, and bustling country fairs and festivals. On her canvases, she constructed a world brimming with the warmth that her reality so sorely lacked.
She gave her paintings to friends and hung them in the local drugstore and at county fairs, where they sold for next to nothing. But in 1938, a New York collector named Louis Caldor happened upon the works, was struck by their incredible, almost childlike sincerity, and bought everything he could find. He purchased the entire collection for $5 per piece. To her, this was a significant sum, and she had no inkling that these same paintings would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars years later.
In 1940, when Anna turned 80, a prestigious New York gallery run by Otto Kallir opened her exhibition titled "What a Farm Wife Paints."
An America weary of the Depression and the looming threat of war was instantly captivated. The works of "Grandma Moses" became symbols of hope, comfort, and enduring values. By 90, she was a superstar; she was invited to the White House, graced the covers of TIME and Life magazines, and saw her reproductions sell by the millions, while Hallmark began printing her artwork on millions of Christmas cards. Her sudden fame genuinely baffled her. She often remarked: "I just paint what I see around me; I don’t understand why anyone cares."
She continued to work until the day she died. Even at 100, she would rise at 4 a.m. to work in her studio, unable to tolerate idleness.
She never chased the money. As her paintings began selling for astronomical sums, she maintained a modest life on her farm, giving away art to friends and neighbors. (Her friends were certainly fortunate to receive such assets as gifts).
Today, decades later, her work is viewed through an entirely different lens. While Anna once had to paint with berry juice on fences because she couldn't afford supplies, her original canvases are now highly sought-after prizes at international auctions.
The record price for one of her paintings, "Sugaring Off," reached $1.36 million. Even smaller original works regularly go under the hammer for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman whose family once considered her strange and wasteful not only made her name immortal but also amassed a fortune, becoming a millionaire in her own lifetime.
She painted until she was 101, producing more than 1,500 canvases during her "late" career. Anna Mary never regretted not starting sooner, nor did she harbor resentment toward her family for their lack of understanding. Her philosophy was simple and unwavering: "I look back on my life like a good day's work; I was happy. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."
