Grandma Moses Day
September 7
About Grandma Moses Day
Grandma Moses Day is observed annually on 7 September, the birthday of American folk artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known universally as Grandma Moses. The day was officially proclaimed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1960 to mark her 100th birthday, and has been observed each year since. It celebrates the life and legacy of a woman who became one of the most beloved painters in American history without picking up a brush in earnest until she was in her late 70s.
Who Was Grandma Moses?
Anna Mary Robertson was born on 7 September 1860 in Greenwich, New York, the third of ten children. Her father was a farmer who also painted as a hobby, a detail that may have planted an early creative seed, though it would take most of a lifetime to take root. She left home at 12 to work as a live-in housekeeper for wealthier families, a role she held for 15 years. One employer, recognising her creativity, bought her chalk and wax crayons, encouraging her to draw.
At 27 she married Thomas Salmon Moses, a farm labourer. The couple farmed in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley before settling permanently in Eagle Bridge, New York. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. Thomas died in 1927, and Anna Mary spent the rest of her long life in Eagle Bridge, farming and, eventually, painting.
Throughout her adult life she had created embroidered woollen pictures as gifts and decorations. When arthritis made embroidery too painful in her 70s, her sister suggested painting as a less demanding alternative. Anna Mary agreed, noting that painting was easier than baking a cake over a hot stove. She was entirely self-taught, experimenting at first with unconventional materials including lemon juice, sawdust, and broken pieces of crockery, and using pins and matchsticks as brushes.
When Is Grandma Moses Day?
Grandma Moses Day falls on 7 September each year, the date of Anna Mary Robertson Moses’s birth in 1860. The first official proclamation came from Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1960, when she turned 100. He repeated the proclamation in 1961 to mark her 101st birthday. She died on 13 December 1961, aged 101, but the annual observance has continued in her honour ever since.
Why It Matters
The life of Grandma Moses carries a message that resonates far beyond the art world: it is never too late to begin something new. She did not exhibit her paintings publicly until she was 78, did not have her first solo exhibition until she was 80, and continued producing work well into her 100th year. Her story is a direct, lived refutation of the idea that creativity, ambition, or reinvention belong to the young.
Her paintings themselves matter too. Her naïve, warmly detailed depictions of rural New England life, barn raisings, maple-sugaring seasons, sleigh rides through winter landscapes, created a pictorial record of a disappearing America that resonated deeply with audiences living through rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. She painted from memory and direct observation, deliberately excluding modern elements such as tractors and telephone poles to preserve the world she had known.
How to Get Involved
Grandma Moses Day is an occasion to celebrate creativity, resilience, and the idea that new beginnings are possible at any age. Ways to mark the day include:
- Visit a museum holding her work in person or browse her paintings online through institutions such as the Bennington Museum in Vermont, which holds the largest US public collection, or the Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Take up a new creative hobby, whether painting, drawing, embroidery, or any other form of making, in the spirit of her late-flowering creativity
- Enrol in an art class or attend a local workshop, particularly if it is something you have long wanted to try but put off
- Read her memoir, My Life’s History (1952), in which she tells her story in her own words
- Purchase a print of her work for your home or as a gift
- Support arts education in your community by donating to a local school art programme or craft club
- Share folk art or your own creative work on social media using #GrandmaMosesDay
History
Anna Mary Robertson Moses came to public attention in 1938, when she was 78 years old. She had placed several of her paintings in the window of a local drugstore in Hoosick Falls, New York, selling them for between three and five US dollars each. A New York City art collector named Louis Caldor spotted them, bought every painting in the shop, and brought her work to the attention of gallery owner Otto Kallir of Galerie St. Etienne in Manhattan.
By 1939, three of her paintings featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her first solo exhibition, titled What a Farm Wife Painted, opened at Kallir’s gallery in 1940. Over roughly three decades of active painting, she produced more than 1,500 canvases.
Her commercial success was extraordinary. Hallmark licensed her paintings for greeting cards; one version of her painting Sugaring Off became a bestselling Hallmark Christmas card in 1947. Her images appeared on tiles, fabrics, ceramics, and a range of consumer goods. President Harry S. Truman presented her with the Women’s National Press Club trophy for outstanding accomplishment in art in 1949. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine and was named Mademoiselle‘s Young Woman of the Year at the age of 88.
Her painting July Fourth was gifted to the White House in 1951. A commemorative US postage stamp featuring her work was issued in 1969. When she died, President John F. Kennedy said of her: “The directness and vividness of her paintings restored a primitive freshness to our perception of the American scene.”
Noteworthy Facts
- Grandma Moses did not begin painting seriously until around the age of 76 to 78, and her first public exhibition did not take place until she was 78
- She produced more than 1,500 paintings over roughly three decades of active work
- Her painting Sugaring Off sold at Christie’s in 2006 for 1,360,000 US dollars, a personal auction record
- A painting purchased in the 1940s for approximately 10 US dollars was later appraised at 60,000 US dollars when it appeared on the television programme Antiques Roadshow
- The character Daisy “Granny” Moses on the US television series The Beverly Hillbillies was named in her honour
- Her artistic style has been compared to that of the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder, for the sweeping rural panoramas populated with small, busy figures
- She often sprinkled glitter on her winter landscape paintings to capture the shimmer of snow
- A major exhibition, “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work”, ran at the Smithsonian from late 2025 into 2026, before transferring to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from September 2026
- She lived to 101, still painting in her final year
Hashtags
- #GrandmaMosesDay
- #NationalGrandmaMosesDay
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