Charles Yardley "C. Y." Turner (November 25, 1850 – January 1, 1919) was an American painter, illustrator, muralist and teacher. His genre scenes and American historical paintings were popularized through engravings and book illustrations.
Biography Turner was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the youngest son of lumber merchant John Comegys Turner (1816-1876) and Hanah Bartlett Turner (1817-1863). His parents were Quakers, and he and his eight siblings attended the school of the Lombard Street Meeting House. He continued as a member of the Baltimore Monthly Meeting until his death.
As a young man, he worked for Baltimore architect Frank M. Davis during the day,Charles Yardley Turner, from National Academy of Design. while studying drawing at the evening school of the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts at night.Rossiter Johnson and John Howard Brown, eds., "Charles Yardley Turner," The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Volume 10 (Boston: The Biographical Society, 1904). He moved to New York City in 1872, where he worked as a colorist in a photographic studio during the day, and attended the National Academy of Design evening school at night. He was one of the founders of the Art Students League of New York in 1875, and studied there for three years under Walter Shirlaw.Alfred Trumble, "C. Y. Turner," The Collector: A Journal Devoted to the Arts and Crafts, vol. 2, no. 11 (April 1, 1891), New York City, p. 126. He moved to Paris in 1878, where he studied under Jean-Paul Laurens, Mihály Munkácsy and Léon Bonnat.
He returned to New York in 1881, taught at a summer art school on Long Island, and began teaching at the Art Students League in the fall. He made a notable debut at the National Academy of Design's 1882 annual exhibition, exhibiting two works—The Grand Canal, Dordrecht (1881), that he had painted in the Netherlands, and The Days That Are No More (1882), that he had painted on Long Island. The latter depicted a young widow and small child leaving a country graveyard, and was inspired by a line from Tennyson—"O death in life, the days that are no more."
Turner painted three works based on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish. Engravings of two of these were best-sellers, and produced royalties for the artist. His second painting in the series, Bridal Procession of John Alden and Priscilla (1886), was bought for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Turner began teaching at the National Academy of Design in 1889.Eliot Candee Clark, History of the National Academy of Design: 1825–1953 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954), p. 139. Among his NAD students were Zelma Baylos,"Zelma Baylos," American Art Annual, Volume 20 (Washington, D.C.: The American Federation of Arts, 1923). Abraham Bogdanove,William H. Gerdts, et al., Abraham J. Bogdanove: Monhegan Summers (Spanierman Gallery, LLC, 2001) Mary Allison Doull,"Mary Allison Doull," American Art Annual, Volume 20 (Washington, D.C.: The American Federation of Arts, 1923). Harry Leith-Ross,William H. Gerdts, et al., Pennsylvania Impressionism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 156. Peter Béla Mayer,"Bela Mayer," American Art Annual, Volume 20 (Washington, D.C.: The American Federation of Arts, 1923). Frederick Ballard Williams"Frederick Ballard Williams," Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Oxford University Press. and Arthur William Woelfle."Arthur W. Woelfle," American Art Annual, Volume 20 (Washington, D.C.: The American Federation of Arts, 1923).
In 1912 he became director of his Baltimore alma mater, renamed the Maryland Institute School of Art and Design.Florence N. Levy, ed., "Who's Who in Art," American Art Annual, Volume 12 (Washington, D.C., The American Federation of Arts, 1916), pp. 489-490.
Muralist Turner painted his first murals in the early 1890s. His philosophy was that a mural should complement the architecture, not compete with it:When we come to mural painting the picture should neither project from the wall nor make a hole in it. The object must not be smothered, and the original form lost. When the decoration becomes more prominent than the object decorated, it is bad decoration. Such treatment would be as false as making the figures in a carpet stand up so prominently as to cause us to experience a sense of striking against them as we walk.
His mural The Triumph of Manhattan (1896) was a cycloramic view of New York Harbor, that encircled the Hotel Manhattan's rotunda. In the foreground, it featured Native Americans, European colonists, and historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Samuel Morse, Robert Fulton, and John Jay, all paying their respects to the Greek-gowned "Empress Manhattan," who was surrounded by female attendants. Turner later painted a mural of Greek gods and goddesses for the hotel's lobby.
One of Turner's most famous murals is The Burning of the "Peggy Stewart" (1903), painted for the Baltimore City Courthouse. It depicts an incident from 1774—often called the "Annapolis Tea Party"—when the American boycott against imported British tea was at its height. Loyalist merchant Anthony Stewart was awaiting the arrival of his ship Peggy Stewart at Annapolis. One of his business partners had tried to get around the boycott by loading more than a ton of tea aboard the Peggy Stewart in London, hidden in seventeen crates marked "Linen." The deception was supposedly discovered in mid-voyage, but when the ship arrived at Annapolis, the partner refused to pay the Crown tax on the tea. The Peggy Stewart was barred from docking at the city or unloading any of its cargo until the Crown tax was paid, so Stewart finally paid it himself. His action set off a riot outside his house, with a radical mob threatening to burn both Stewart's house and the ship. The mob's leaders forced Stewart into a devil's bargain, they would spare his house if he set fire to the ship himself.Thomas Ringgold, "Account of the Destruction of the Brig 'Peggy Stewart,' at Annapolis, 1774," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 25, no. 1 (January 1901), pp. 248-254. Turner's 5-panel mural features Stewart at far left, in shirt sleeves having just set the fire, and a tableau of life-size figures in the foreground, set against a background of flames. It is in height and in length.
In 1905, the New York City Board of Education instituted a policy of commissioning permanent works of art for its school buildings. The first commission went to Turner—two large murals depicting the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal, for the DeWitt Clinton High School at 10th Avenue & West 58th Street, Manhattan. The first mural, Entering the Mohawk Valley, depicted Governor DeWitt Clinton and other dignitaries aboard the first barge to transverse the canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. The second, Marriage of the Waters, depicted a famous ceremony in which Governor Clinton poured an urn of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean. Turner was paid $3,500, one half percent of the building's construction cost."A Time Capsule: Artworks in the School," The New York Times, May 12, 1996. The school relocated to The Bronx in 1929, and the murals were taken down and reinstalled in the library of the new building.
General Washington at Fort Lee (1910) was an unusual choice of subject for a mural, since it depicted one of the Continental Army's most humiliating defeats in the Revolutionary War. Fort Washington was located at the northern end of Manhattan Island, on a bluff of high land along the Hudson River. Fort Lee was located on the opposite side of the Hudson, atop the Palisades, in New Jersey. The twin forts were about apart—separated by the width of the river—and both had been built in Summer 1776 to prevent British warships from sailing any further north up the Hudson. On the morning of November 16, 1776, the British Army executed a massive assault on Fort Washington, with some 8,000 soldiers attacking from the north, east and south. Meanwhile, bombarded the fort with cannon fire from the east, and prevented Washington from sending boats with reinforcements from New Jersey. The 3,000 Continentals garrisoned at the fort fought through most of the day, hoping that reinforcements would be able to cross the Hudson by night, but the British overwhelmed the garrison by mid-afternoon. The commander of the fort surrendered, and more than 2,800 Continentals were taken prisoner. Turner's mural depicts Washington (on horseback) and his staff monitoring the attack from the opposite side of the Hudson, but powerless to intervene. It was this defeat and Washington's subsequent retreat that inspired Thomas Paine to pen The American Crisis, and its famous opening sentence—"These are the times that try men's souls."
Colorist
Muralist Francis Davis Millet was selected to be director of decoration for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Turner, who had been runner-up for the job, agreed to be his assistant. Eight years later, Turner was colorist for the entire 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The Chicago exposition had been nicknamed "The White City," because of the color of all but one of its major buildings. Turner described his ambitious color scheme for the Buffalo exposition:It was for us to make the color of the exposition tell something, the same story as the sculpture. Accordingly, we have used bright, brilliant hues on the buildings that are suggestive of the early life of man. The horticultural building, for instance, has orange ornaments, with details in brilliant blue, green, yellow and rose. The government building is prevailingly in rich yellow. As one goes up the esplanade, the decorations become more sober. The music hall has a scheme of dull red; the machinery building in green-gray. The electric tower is given over to a harmony of green and gold on an ivory ground. Here the color-key of the whole exposition is struck. The lovely green of Niagara water, rich as the green on the peacock's wing, appears in its purity on the electric tower, to be echoed in every structure of the show-city. Not a building is there which is without its notes of Niagara-green."The Color Scheme of the Pan-American Exposition," Public Opinion, vol. 30, no. 17 (April 25, 1901), New York, p. 532.
Awards and honors
The National Academy of Design awarded Turner the 1884 Second Hallgarten Prize (and $200 cash award) for The Courtship of Miles Standish,New England Manufacturers' & Mechanics' Institute, "Academy of Design Exhibition," Art Year-Book 1884 (New York: Arthur B. Turnure, 1884), [no page numbers]. the first of his "Longfellow" paintings. He exhibited The Days That Are No More at the 1886 Paris Salon, and received an Honorable Mention. He exhibited The Days That Are No More at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and again received an Honorable Mention.Exposition universelle de 1889, Catalogue illustré des beaux-arts 1789-1889 (Paris: F. G. Dumas, 1889), p. 84. He exhibited eleven oil paintings at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition—including The Grand Canal, Dordrecht, The Days That Are No More, and The Courtship of Miles Standish—and was awarded a Medal for Excellence.Department of Fine Arts, World's Columbian Exposition, Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts, with Index of Exhibitors (Chicago: W.B. Conkey Company, 1893). The Architectural League of New York awarded Turner its 1912 Medal of Honor for Painting, for his mural General Washington at Fort Lee, at the Hudson County Courthouse in Jersey City, New Jersey.Yearbook of the Architectural League of New York, Volume 28 (New York: Architectural League of New York, 1913).