AFA Autumn 2018

2018 Antiques & Fine Art 97 Helen Maria Turner (1858–1958), Girl with Lantern, 1904. Oil on canvas, 44 x 34 inches. Born in Kentucky, Helen Maria Turner moved as a child to New Orleans, where she was raised by her uncle following the death of her parents. The artist studied at Tulane University and taught at a girls’ school before she enrolled in the Art Students League in New York. Turner continued her studies at Cooper Union Design School for Women and traveled to Europe several times with William Merritt Chase. From 1902 to 1919 she taught at the art school of the New York YWCA. In 1906, Turner began spending summers at the art colony, Craigsmoor, in New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of the artist’s portraits in 1914, which gave the artist entrée into more prominent national exhibitions. In the 1917 show Six American Women Painters , Turner exhibited alongside other important American Impressionist painters, including Mary Cassatt and Jane Peterson. In 1921, Helen Turner became the fourth woman elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta presented a solo exhibition of her work in 1927. In 1942 she returned to New Orleans, where she died in 1958, just ten months before her hundredth birthday.