Anna Mary Robertson
“I would draw the picture (on butcher paper) and then color it
with grape juice or berries…”
Anna was born on September 7, 1860 to a large farm family near
Greenwich, New York. She had no formal
schooling other than a few months at a local one room country school.
She left home at twelve to earn her living as a domestic. After fifteen years as a paid housekeeper she
married Thomas Salmon Moses who was a farm worker. They settled in Virginia
where she bore ten children, five of whom died as infants.
Her interest in art was expressed
throughout her life, including embroidery of pictures with yarn, until
arthritis made this pursuit too painful. The family returned to New York State
in 1905 and she turned to painting at the age of 78. Her first work was done in exterior house
paint, on “an old piece of canvas which had been used for mending a threshing
machine cover.”
Anna put several of her paintings for sale with some of her other
craftwork at a local drug store. I
vacationing New York City art collector bought them all and went to her farm
house to purchase fifteen others. He
placed three of them in the Museum of Modern Art. The following year she had a one woman show
at a well known gallery and at the age of eighty became an overnight success. Anna charmed wherever she sent. She was a tiny, lively woman with mischievous
grey eyes, a quick wit but she could be sharp-tongued or stern when necessary.
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