When Do Artists Retire?

An Old Woman 
Rembrandt

Or do they?

Henry Moore is quoted as saying "There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it."

I’ve never personally heard an artist say they were looking forward to permanently laying aside the brushes to take up golf or go fishing. Although I can imagine having to slow down or make some changes due to health issues, for some artists this kind of problem leads to a creative solution. In Creativity and the Exceptional Aging Artist, August L Freundlich and John A Shively give the example of Matisse tying a brush to his hands to work when he was troubled with arthritis. Matisse called his last fourteen years his second life.

Some studies suggest that there is a benefit to aging for some artists; that although output may slow the quality remains or even accelerates. Art historians even have a term for this: “alterstiehl” and note it in the works of Titian, and Rembrandt, among others.

In Aging Well an article by Juliann Schaeffer, Retirement Redefined: Lessons From Aging Artists talks about how older artists have something to teach other seniors about how to age successfully and thrive in later life.

So let's hear it for alterstiehl - they say that Georgia O’Keeffe painted into her nineties.