Elmer Turner

Elmer Turner (1890-1966)

Elmer Turner was born in Wyoming in 1890. In 1899, the family moved to Greeley, Colorado where his mother worked for many years as an assistant librarian. Turner may have studied art before being shipped to France where he served as a second lieutenant fighting in the first world war. A surviving sketch signed "TURNER, FRANCE," shows considerable academic influence. If his experiences in France include anything other than sketching between battles it is not known. He was gassed and shell shocked in that war, injuries which would later incapacitate him with a gradual paralysis.

By 1920, Turner was in Chicago studying at the Art Institute and with James E. McBurney, a noted muralist. McBurney only had three students and one of these, a pretty young woman from his home state was Ila McAfee. They worked side by side on McBurney's mural commissions. Ila later said that Elmer would paint the landscape and she would add the figures. In this exciting setting Ila...