Ross Turner (1847-1915)

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 shortly after his marriage to Louise Blaney in 1885. The couple lived on Bridge Street, first at number 126 then at number 135, and briefly rented studio space at 11 Spring Street. 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.

Turner often painted Salem scenes and was renowned for both his medieval-style illuminated manuscripts and for his skill as a watercolorist. He wrote a number of books on the latter subject 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.