 | This article's factual accuracy is disputed .(June 2024) |
 Short description by Kallir of the form in use by Grandma Moses on the stickers she placed on the back of paintings after 1941 | |
| Author | Grandma Moses |
|---|---|
Publication date | started in 1941, ended when she died in 1961 |
The Grandma Moses record book is a small book given in 1941 to Grandma Moses by her brother Fred E. Robertson for keeping track of the titles of paintings she made. [1] According to Otto Kallir in 1975, "The book is bound in black boards; it measures 7 1/2 by 10 inches and bears the word "Record" in gold lettering on the cover. The pages are numbered from 1 to 152." [2]
Robertson was a painter himself, and was probably trying to help his sister keep track of her sales in a similar way that he did. He also gave her a set of stickers with her photo and a small form with date, number and title, which would correspond to the lines in the book. These stickers were to be filled out and stuck on the backs of the paintings she sold. He had included headings for "number", "year completed", and "title" on the first few pages of the record book to help her. [2]
Kallir, who started cataloguing Grandma Moses paintings himself a few years after she starting recording in this book, claimed the numbering was not always accurate or in order, and did not always match the stickers placed on the backs of the paintings themselves, though this was the intention. He was never able to fathom her numbering logic, but his methodical research resulted in a catalog raisonné published in 1973 with 1,316 unique "RB" numbers from her record book, that clearly increase in number.
In 1951 Winona Fisher, Grandma Moses' daughter, took over the tedious work of reconciling the numbers, which resulted in a more accurate match between the data on the stickers and in the record book. The highest "RB" number Otto Kallir recorded in 1973 was 2,211 and considering most of the paintings the artist made before 1941 never had "RB" numbers, then this could possibly mean there is roughly a thousand more paintings by her extant than have been previously supposed. Now and then estate sales include paintings with unmistakably authentic labels on the back that do not match the titles associated with those dates and/or "RB" numbers in the record book or the 1973 catalog. The Galerie St. Etienne solved this problem after the artist's death by issuing "new" catalog numbers in the Otto Kallir cataloguing system that places these newly discovered paintings within the proper context of date painted and subject portrayed.
