Grandma Moses
What failed
She was sent out to work as a hired girl at twelve and did that for fifteen years, with no training of any kind. She only started painting in her seventies because arthritis had ended her embroidery. At the county fair her preserves won a prize and her pictures won nothing — as she put it, she won a prize for her fruit and jam, but no pictures. The paintings then sat in a chemist's window gathering dust for several years. When a collector finally took them to New York, dealers hesitated because she was too old to be worth investing in. Three went into a museum show open only to members, which changed nothing, and her first solo exhibition sold almost none.
What happened next
Two weeks after that show she was invited to speak at a department store Thanksgiving festival. She talked about jam and farming, the press adored her, and she became a national figure at eighty. She was on the cover of Time at ninety-three, and lived to a hundred and one.
The point
Everyone who saw the work before 1940 saw the same paintings everyone loved afterwards. The dealers' objection was never the pictures. It was that she was seventy-eight, which they treated as a fact about her prospects rather than about her.
The sequence
6 documented failures, shown with the successes in between. Every entry carries its own source — the wins are part of the record, and leaving them out is how these stories get distorted.
- 1872
Sent out to work as a hired girl at twelve. She does it for fifteen years, with no training of any kind.
- 1930s
Arthritis ends her embroidery. She picks up a brush because she can no longer hold a needle.
- 1936
At the county fair her preserves win a prize and her paintings win nothing.
- 1937
The paintings sit in a chemist's window gathering dust for several years.
- 1938
A collector takes them to New York, and dealers hesitate because she is too old to invest in.
- 1939
Three paintings enter a museum show open only to members. Nothing comes of it.
- 1940
Her first solo exhibition sells almost nothing.
- 1940
She speaks at a department store festival, talks about jam, and becomes famous at eighty.
- 1953
She is on the cover of Time at ninety-three.
Sources
- Grandma Moses — Biography (Kallir Research Institute)
Moses's paintings sat in the drugstore window, gathering dust next to crafts and other objects created by local homemakers, for several years.
- Grandma Moses: A Good Day's Work (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Moses began painting in earnest in her late 70s and was 80 when gallerist Otto Kallir introduced her to the American public with her first solo exhibition in 1940.
- Grandma Moses (TIME)
The artist graced the cover of the Dec. 28, 1953, issue of TIME when she was 93, painting a butternut tree during a Christmas-season interview.
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Related failures
Others in visual art, and nearby.
Claude Monet
Painter
Rejected by the Salon in three years out of four, evicted for unpaid rent, and his paintings seized by creditors.
7 documented failures
Yayoi Kusama
Artist
Turned up uninvited at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and had her sale stopped by the organisers. Represented Japan there twenty-seven years later.
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Charles M. Schulz
Cartooning
His own school yearbook would not print his drawings. He called it his first major rejection.
6 documented failures
Auguste Rodin
Sculptor
The Beaux-Arts refused him three times, the Salon rejected the first sculpture he offered twice, and he spent most of two decades cutting architectural ornament he did not sign.
7 documented failures