Home by the Brook

The Davis Museum was recently gifted two paintings by Grandma Moses, Home by the Brook and Out for the Sleigh Ride, both from 1949. Anna Mary Robertson Moses, or Grandma Moses, grew up on a farm in upstate New York and moved to a farm in Virginia after she married in 1887. In 1905, she and her husband bought a farm in Eagle Bridge, New York where they ran a dairy business. Moses entertained herself by making needlework pictures portraying colorful scenes of farm life. She only began painting at the age of 78 after her husband died, and her arthritis made embroidery difficult. A self-taught artist, Moses painted with whatever materials were at hand, such as grape juice or fiberboard, and did not focus on the perspective or proportion in her landscape paintings. The painterly quality and nostalgia that characterized her work garnered her attention from the art world. She gained the nickname “Grandma Moses” from a reviewer at New York’s Herald Tribune, and the art collector Louis Caldor was an avid proponent of her work. She died at 101 after painting more than fifteen hundred works, exhibiting internationally, and receiving the Women’s National Press Club Award from President Truman.

Although she experienced all aspects of farm life, she conveyed only happy memories in her paintings: fields covered by snow, barn dances, and maple sugaring. In Home by the Brook and Out for the Sleigh Ride, Grandma Moses depicts idyllic rural scenes, focusing on elements of the landscape like trees and a brook, as well as people enjoying nature, such as in a sleigh ride. While these two paintings are small in scale, they show exquisite details, from lush vegetation next to the river to the grooved exterior of the gray house and covered bridge. Through her abstract naturalist style, as seen in the minimal depictions of the figures and thick white lines representing snow accumulated on twigs of the tree in Out for the Sleigh Ride, her vivid portrayal of each scene transports the viewer to rural America.