Monsignor James P. Turner
Framed: 100 × 53 3/4 × 3 3/4 inches (254 × 136.53 × 9.53 cm)
- 218
First Annual Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., February 7–March 9, 1907, no. 340 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Philadelphia, March 1930, no. 300 (as Portrait of Father Turner).
Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, PA, April 26–May 10, 1970, no. 14.
Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 29–November 28, 1982 (traveled), no. 130.
A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977–1987, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., October 14–December 6, 1987, no. 73 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Thomas Eakins Rediscovered: At Home, at Work, at School, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, September 26, 1991–April 5, 1992, no cat.
Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.; Saint Louis Art Museum; and Toledo Museum of Art, October 8, 1995–September 22, 1996 (traveled), unnumbered.
This portrait is one of 14 that Eakins completed of clergymen at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. The painter began the series with an intimate, bust-length likeness of Turner. Eakins may have executed this grander, full-length portrait to commemorate the cleric's ascent to the high rank of Prothonotary Apostolic in 1906.
To Monsignor James P. Turner, Philadelphia;
to Anna A., Helen C., and Elizabeth A. King (his foster sisters), Philadelphia, 1933;
to Misericordia Hospital (now Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia), before 1962;
to (Peter H. Davidson & Co., New York, 1979);
to NAMA, 1983.
First Annual Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1907), unpaginated (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
“American Art Exhibition Opened at the Corcoran Gallery,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, February 7, 1907, 8.
William R. Lester, “Fine Display of American Art at Corcoran Exhibit,” North American (Philadelphia), February 11, 1907, 8 (as Rev. James R. Turner).
Alan Burroughs, “Catalogue of Work by Thomas Eakins (1869–1916),” Arts Magazine 5 (June 1924), 333 (as Rev. James R. Turner).
“An Exhibition of Thomas Eakins’ Work,” Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 25 (March 1930), 31 (as Portrait of Father Turner).
Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), 192, 203 (as Mgr. James P. Turner).
Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 211, 214–15 (as Msgr. James P. Turner).
Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, exh. cat. (Overbrook, Pa.: St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, 1970), unpaginated.
Evan H. Turner, “Thomas Eakins at Overbrook,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 81 (December 1970), 197.
Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Thomas Eakins (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974), 253, 351 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Victoria Donohoe, “Hospital Selling Eakins Portrait Similar to One That Broke Record,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 16, 1978, 6C.
Theodor Siegl, The Thomas Eakins Collection (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978), 38n62, 164.
William H. Gerdts, “Thomas Eakins and the Episcopal Portrait: Archbishop William Henry Elder,” Arts Magazine 53 (May 1979), 154.
Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 2:192, 195.
Darrel Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982), 119 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Donald Hoffmann, “Portrait by Eakins Bought for Nelson,” Kansas City Star, October 2, 1983, 3E.
“La Chronique des Arts: Principales Acquisitions des Musées en 1983,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 103 (March 1984), 35 (as Portrait de Monseigneur James P. Turner).
Donald Hoffmann, “Kemper Family Donates $1.5 Million Portrait,” Kansas City Star, October 12, 1986, 12A.
A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977–1987. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 168–69 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Michael Fried, Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 27, 32–33.
Ellen R. Goheen, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1988), 123–24 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Kathleen A. Foster and Cheryl Leibold, Writing about Eakins: The Manuscripts in Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 382.
NAMA 1991, 4, 49–51.
William Innes Homer, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992), 226– 27.
John Wilmerding, ed., Thomas Eakins, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 34, 177, 178nn7–10.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 243 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 1933–1993 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 109 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Kathryn C. Johnson, ed., Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, exh. cat. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1995), 84, cover.
Elizabeth Milroy, ed., Guide to the Thomas Eakins Research Collection, with a Lifetime Exhibition Record and Bibliography (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1996), 32 (as Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Kathleen A. Foster, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered: Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 62, 74–75, 200, 206–8, 212, 214–19, 224, 282n35, 283nn46, 50, 52, 420–21, pl. 22 (as Monsignor James P. Turner and Portrait of Monsignor James P. Turner).
Amy B. Werbel, “Art and Science in the Work of Thomas Eakins: The Case of Spinning and Knitting,” American Art 12 (Fall 1998), 38, 41.
Mark Sullivan, “Thomas Eakins and His Portrait of Father Fedigan,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, 109: 2–3 (Fall–Winter 1998), 1–23, 7, 8, 11 (repro.).
Henry Adams, Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 380–81 (repro.).
Kristin Schwain, Signs of Grace: Religion and American Art in the Gilded Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 39, 40, 142n104 (repro.).
Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 245–251, 2: 106–107 (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 172 (repro.).
An Important Collection of Portraits by Thomas Eakins from the Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary (New York: Christie’s, 2015), unpaginated (repro.).
