Still Life, 1881

Ross Sterling Turner (1847-1915) was a favorite of the Eustis family, particularly of Edith Eustis’s mother Mary Hemenway who kept three of his watercolors on the chairs in her back parlor explaining “My pictures are my friends. I want them to sit on my chairs.” Turner began his career as a draftsman for the U.S. Patent Office. In 1876 he traveled to Munich where he studied with Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase. In the early 1880s he followed Duveneck to Venice and Florence. This painting, completed in Venice in 1881, exhibits the lighter palate that many American artists adopted once they had studied in Italy.