Grandma Explains

Why did I start to paint in my old age?, well to tell the truth, I had neuritus and artheritus so bad I could, do but little work, but had to keep busy to pass the time away. ...

To pass the time away, Anna Mary Robertson Moses has painted nearly 700 pictures in the last seven years. Now, at 86, "Grandma" Moses is the best-known self-taught (or "primitive") painter in the U.S., and her gay little landscapes (mostly of her upstate New York farm in the Hoosik Valley) fetch an average $1,000. "I will say," she admitted, "that I have did remarkable for one of my years and experience."

A Manhattan gallery next week will put on a comprehensive exhibition of her work. Last week a book of her pictures (Grandma Moses, American Primitive, Doubleday; $6) was re-issued with an introduction by Literary Rustic Louis Bromfield, who compared her with Peter Bruegel. Grandma Moses is no Bruegel, but she is no stale Picasso either. Sophisticates rave over the artless joy in her paintings.

"As for publicity," Grandma Moses remarked, "that Im too old to care for now." The little old lady has spent almost all her life in peaceful obscurity, farming, and educating her ten children (TIME, Oct. 21, 1940). She herself never went to school much, "owing to the cold, and not warm enough clothing." But last week she did try her unschooled hand at an article (in the New York Times Magazine) to explain how she goes about painting. The Times printed it just as she wrote it. Excerpt:

"How do I paint? well first I get a frame, then I saw my masonite to fit. ... Now it is ready for the scene, what ever the mind may produce, A land scape picture, an Old Bridge a Dream or a summer or winter scene, Childhoods memory, what everone fancys, But always somethings pleasing and Cheerful and I like bright colors and activity,

"[Painting) is a very pleasant Hobby, if one does not have to hurry [but] I don't advise any one to take it up as a business proprosition, unless they really have talent, and are crippled so as to deprive then of phyical labor."

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