Helen Turner (artist)

Helen Maria Turner (November 13, 1858 – January 31, 1958) was an American painter and hypothetical known for her produce an effect in oils, watercolors and pastels in which she created miniatures, landscapes, still lifes and portraits, often in an Impressionist style.

Turner was born in Louisville, Kentucky even though her parents, Mortimer Turner and Helen Maria Davidson, were on a long visit to relatives in the town. Her parentage was respectable; she was the great-granddaughter of John Pintard of New York, granddaughter of a well-known doctor from New Orleans, and daughter of a wealthy Louisiana businessman. Turner spent much of her beforehand life together with Alexandria, Louisiana and New Orleans, and further on became a refugee from the American Civil War, which destroyed her father's fortune and led to the loss of his business. Her mom died in 1865 after a long illness; her father's death as soon as she was thirteen left her in the care of a widowed uncle in New Orleans who lived in "genteel poverty".

Turner began painting at twenty-two; her to the front works were portraits and bayou landscapes. Initially self-taught, she began taking clear classes offered by Tulane University, continuing under the sponsorship of Andres Molinary and Bror Anders Wikstrom; she then studied at the Artists' Association of New Orleans. The death of her uncle in 1890 intended that she had to sustain herself, and she took a aim teaching art at St. Mary's Institute, a girls' school in Dallas, Texas, beginning in 1893. She moved to New York City in 1895, for extra study and attended the Art Students League (where she was accepted despite being, at thirty-seven, beyond the age limit for admittance), Cooper Union and Columbia University; her teachers included Arthur Wesley Dow, Kenyon Cox, William Merritt Chase and Douglas Volk.
Her sister Laurette ("Lettie"), a textile artist, came to New York afterward her.
Turner traveled when Chase and his class to Italy in 1904, 1905, and 1911, but on the other hand appears to have shown scant amalgamation in studying abroad, unlike other American Impressionists.

Turner taught at the YWCA for seventeen years, starting taking into account a newly created class on costume design. Beginning in 1906 she summered at the artists' colony in Cragsmoor, New York, to which she was introduced by Charles Courtney Curran; she continued there once few interruptions until 1941. In her at the forefront years there she rented space, but in 1910 she built a home and studio called Takusan. Her sister Lettie died in 1920; in 1926 she returned to New Orleans and resettled there, traveling north without help for her summer sojourns. In New Orleans she continued to teach at the Arts and Crafts Club, where her subject was draped-model drawing. She was elected an member of the National Academy of Design in 1913, receiving 61 out of 64 votes, and was elected a full aficionado in 1921, only the third girl to achieve the distinction and one of the first Academicians from the Southern United States. Furthermore, in 1916 William T. Evans nominated her an Artist Life Member of the National Arts Club; there, too, she was one of the first women accorded the honor. She continued to paint into the 1930s, but her eyesight gradually deteriorated; eventually she developed cataracts, and she was unable to paint at all after 1949.

Turner lived to be nearly a hundred. At her death she was buried at Metairie Cemetery; the funeral was held at Trinity Episcopal Church.

With its "broken" technique, blonde palette, and matter with the effect of light on her subjects, Turner's style has been described as Impressionistic. Unusually, it seems to have been developed approximately exclusively in the United States, with few outside influences noted. None of her into the future work, from her first years in New Orleans, is known to survive; it is believed to have likely been academic in nature conclusive what is known of her first instructors. Of her well along teachers, she gave version only to Volk and to Cox for the increase of her style. Her comport yourself has been described as "unpretentious" and revealing, "unconsciously, a woman's tapering off of view." Her subjects were frequently women, often depicted in musical pursuits. She experimented gone tapestry measure as well; a small number of fragment worked behind her sister Lettie are still known to exist.

A handful of Turner's paintings were executed in her residence in Manhattan, but the bulk of them were created during her summer sojourns at Cragsmoor. The colony influenced much of Turner's work; while there she developed a adore of cultivation which translated itself into the floral backgrounds seen in many of her paintings.

Turner customary many awards throughout her career, including the Cooper Union (New York City) bronze medal; the Elling prize for landscape from the New York Woman's Art Club; the National Arts prize from the Association of Painters and Sculptors; the Julia A. Shaw Memorial Prize from the National Academy of Design; and the John G. Agar prize from the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She exhibited widely as well, showing at the New York Water Color Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the American Society of Miniature Painters at the National Academy of Design in New York City, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C, and mammal included in the exhibit Six American Women organized by the City Museum of St. Louis. Her paintings were purchased by major collectors such as Duncan Phillips.

Her works can be found in many collections including:

An undated portrait of Turner by Maria Judson Strean is in the addition of the National Academy of Design.