Ross Turner (1847-1915) American artist. Ross Sterling Turner was born in Westport, New York, and after a brief career as a draftsman traveled to Europe where he studied painting under Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase in Germany and Venice Italy. Turner returned to America after seven years abroad and settled in Salem, Mass. shortly after his marriage to Louise Blaney in 1885. He taught in the architecture department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 30 years and also in the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Turner also offered private instruction in his Boston studio and during the summers in Gloucester or Salem. He wrote a number of books and frequently exhibited with the American Watercolor Society. An article about the artist in the Boston Transcript in 1888 claimed that "probably there is no one in the locality that knows more about the manipulation of watercolors, their scope, properties, and legitimate place." The Peabody Essex Museum owns a wonderful watercolor of a Salem garden by Turner and also many of his sketch books and personal papers. Original etching, plate signed, plate mark approx. 2-3/4 x 3" plus margins.

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