Grace Hill Turnbull (December 30, 1880 – December 26, 1976) was an American painter, sculptor and writer.
Biography
Born to a cultured family in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Turnbull studied painting at the
Maryland Institute College of Art
The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, making it one of t ...
, the
, and the
Art Students League of New York. She then turned her attention to sculpture, studying at the Rinehart School of the Maryland Institute and in Rome.
In 1914 she received the Whitelaw Reid Prize in Paris,
and she received the Anna Hyatt Huntington Prize in 1932 and 1944.
Turnbull was notorious during her life for her commitment to abstinence in many fields – she objected strenuously to alcohol, and served only apple juice at her own gatherings – and her support for
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...
. She lived in Baltimore for much of her life, in a house and studio designed by her brother Bayard, and never married.
Besides her artistic pursuits she wrote a number of books, including ''Tongues of Fire'' (1929) and ''Fruit of the Vine'' (1950). Her autobiography ''Chips from My Chisel'' was published in 1953, and she also editor ''Essence of Plotinus'' (1934). Turnbull also wrote pamphlets and contributed articles to a variety of publications.
One example is the eight page pamphlet, ''Battle Front as Seen by a Sculptor,'' published by the
Women's International League in 1936.
Turnbull's 1941 sculpture, ''Python of India,'' is owned by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, while two of her public artworks, a memorial to
Lizette Woodworth Reese and a statue of a
naiad, remain in Baltimore.
A collection of her papers is held at
Syracuse University.
Her house in
the Guilford neighborhood, which she had willed along with a collection of artworks to the
Maryland Historical Society
The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC), formerly the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), . founded on March 1, 1844, is the oldest cultural institution in the U.S. state of Maryland. The organization "collects, preserves, and inte ...
,
still stands.
Her work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...
in 1996.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turnbull, Grace
1880 births
1976 deaths
American women sculptors
American women painters
20th-century American sculptors
20th-century American painters
20th-century American writers
20th-century American women artists
20th-century American women writers
Artists from Baltimore
Writers from Baltimore
Painters from Maryland
Maryland Institute College of Art alumni
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni
Art Students League of New York alumni
Sculptors from New York (state)
Sculptors from Maryland