Grandma Moses, painter
Anna Mary Robertson was called Grandma Moses by the press when she began a painting career in her 70’s. Anna had a happy childhood and worked hard on the family farm. Her father enjoyed seeing the children’s drawings and would buy them large sheets of blank newspaper upon which they could draw. The young Anna Mary loved to draw happy, colorful scenes. She only attended school in the summer due to the cold and her lack of warm clothing. At twelve she stopped going to school and she began earning her living as a hired girl at homes near the family farm.
It was on her farm in Eagle Ridge that Grandma Moses painted her first painting. She was wallpapering her parlor and ran out of paper. To finish the room she put up white paper and painted a scene. It is known as the Fireboard, and it hangs today in the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont.
As she aged and found farm work too difficult, Grandma Moses took up embroidering pictures in yarn to fill her spare time. At the age of seventy-six, because of arthritis, she gave up embroidery and began to paint.
In 1938 a New York engineer and art collector, Louis J. Caldor, saw some of her paintings displayed in a drug store window. They were priced from $3 to $5, depending on size. He bought them all, drove to the artist’s home at Eagle Bridge and bought ten others she had there. The next year, three Grandma Moses paintings were included in an art show in New York.
She was soon world famous. During the 1950s, Grandma Moses’ exhibitions were so popular that they broke attendance records all over the world. A Mother’s Day magazine article noted that despite her fame “Grandma Moses remains prouder of her preserves than of her paintings, and proudest of all of her four children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”
Sir Walter Scott,Historical Novelist
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education. – Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world,because of his talent in arts, during his time.
When Walter was boy he suffered from a bout of polio which left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live at his grandparents’ farm. Here his aunt Jenny taught him to read and he learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterized much of his work.
When he was seven he returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school. When Walter was 8 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh. He could now walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books. He was mentored privately by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing.
When he was 12 he attended the University of Edinburgh. At 15 he became an apprentice in his father’s office. During this time Walter had many private mentors.
Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America.
” Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. “– William Butler Yeats
Sir Noel Peirce Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, and flamboyance. Noel’s father lacked ambition and industry, and family finances were often poor. Noel was bitten by the performing bug early and appeared in amateur concerts by the age of seven. He attended the Chapel Royal Choir School as a young child. He had little formal schooling but was a voracious reader.
His mother sent him to a dance academy in London,seeing his enthusiasm for arts. His first professional engagement was as Prince Mussel in the children’s play The Goldfish. In Present Indicative, his first volume of memoirs, Noel wrote:
“One day … a little advertisement appeared in the Daily Mirror…. It stated that a talented boy of attractive appearance was required by a Miss Lila Field to appear in her production of an all-children fairy play: The Goldfish. This seemed to dispose of all argument. I was a talented boy… and, when washed and smarmed down a bit, passably attractive. There appeared to be no earthly reason why Miss Lila Field shouldn’t jump at me, and we both believed that she would be a fool indeed to miss such a magnificent opportunity.
I had written a post earlier on some other home schoolers and there you can find the world famous scientist Albert einstein and his home school story.
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