Born into poverty in antebellum New Orleans, Helen Maria Turner (1858 – 1958) overcame desperate circumstances to become one of the more successful artists of the American South.  From an early age, Turner was eager to pursue her interest in art, but lacked the resources for professional study.  She spent her early career as an untrained painter of ivory miniatures.  It was not until she was forty-seven years old that she saved enough money to study at New York’s Art Students League.  Eventually adopting the Impressionist technique, Turner finally experienced success as an artist when she was in her fifties, receiving commissions for the portraits and genre subjects that today define her career.  Turner’s many images of women in landscapes were often compared to those of fellow Americans J. Alden Weir and Frederick Frieseke.  Her evocative interiors, on the other hand, are indebted to the French Post-Impressionist painters Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard.