AUTO HISTORY

Motor Illustrator: A.M. Turner

November 1915 cover. A woman in a green velvet coat, wearing a chrysanthemum corsage, prepares to drive an open car. A sign posted on a tree reads: "Danger. Go Slow."

Alfred M. Turner (1851 — July 27, 1932) was born in London and tutored by his artist father Edwin. As a widower with daughter Elizabeth ("Bette"), he came to the U.S. about 1875. For a number of years he practiced his craft at a New York University Club studio, where he painted NYU Deans McCracken and Brush. He taught art at Cooper Union for twelve years.

Known as a portraitist, he exhibited at the National Academy and the American Watercolor Society. He was a member of the Lotos Club (literary society), the American Watercolor Society, the Salmagundi Club, and the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences. He drew illustrations for Scribner's and The Century. The Roberts, Johnson and Rand Shoe Company of St. Louis advertised in a 1910 issue of Boot and Shoe Recorder that they would send a free reproduced Turner watercolor of a "Society" girl to any of their dealers requesting it. In 1915, his work also appeared in Illustrated Mother Goose Rhymes. He is known to have painted portraits of actress Ada Rehan, socialite Annie Robinson Smith, ichthyologist George Brown Goode, and many others. One of his images, "Girl with Bouquet", appeared on a commercial Christmas postcard, and he once painted a cow, titled "Follyland Fancy" for Mr. Anderson T. Herd of New Hope, Pennsylvania. Mr. Herd had paid the highest price then recorded for a single Guernsey when he purchased Follyland Nancy in 1919. Turner was a double leg amputee and poverty-stricken in his later days.

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