A Beautiful World 1948

Here you can see a landscape painting by Grandma Moses, an artist who didn’t begin painting until her late 70s. Grandma Moses, born Anna Mary Robertson, lived through significant cultural shifts in America, from rural agrarian life to an increasingly industrialized society. She was an outsider, a woman, painting rural scenes from her memories. She turned to art when arthritis made embroidery, her lifelong hobby, too difficult. She expressed a longing for the past in her paintings, saying, “I’ll paint you one. I’ll paint you one from way back.” The idyllic scene you see here reflects a yearning for a simpler time, a world untouched by the complexities of modern life. The painting invites us to reflect on our relationship to the past, to nature, and to community, asking whether we too share a longing for a ‘beautiful world.’