There is a particular stereotype of creative genius: that of the youthful prodigy of irrepressible talent. Unlike a surgeon or a politician, the artist is not expected to accumulate years of knowledge and experience before assuming their role. You could say that one does not become but rather is born an artist.
Yet history offers plenty of counter-examples. The French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau worked as a toll-and-tax collector until picking up a paintbrush in his 40s. Alfred Wallis, a West Country fisher, started painting and drawing in his 70s. After his wife’s death, he began making his pictures of life on the coast and sea, mostly on scraps of cardboard, “for company”, he once said. American folk artist Grandma Moses, a domestic housekeeper turned farmer, began producing her New England landscapes at 76; her work grew so popular that in December 1953, at the age of 93, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
