TitleAn Emblem of Mortality
Artist
Charles Yardley Turner
(American, 1850 - 1918)
Date1880
MediumOil on panel
DimensionsUnframed: 20 × 24 in.
Framed: 24 3/8 × 28 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.
SignedSigned at upper right: "C- Y- Turner -- 1880"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, June 5, 1886
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1267-P
Label Text"An Emblem of Mortality" is part of a series of works by Turner concerned with the past and the inevitable passage of time. His repeated exploration of these themes must have also involved a recurrent use of the same model for when the painting appeared at the Academy Annual, the critic of the Art Amateur commented, "C.Y. Turner shows us a favorite model of his of whom the public must be getting very weary. This time he puts a human skull in the hands of the old man . . . ."Despite the directness of the figure's gaze into the face of the skull, it is the firm caressing of the head, centrally placed on the canvas, which most poignantly demonstrates the tenuous division between the living and the dead. Turner emphasizes the large grasping hand by building it up through the layering of thick paint. A similar impasto treatment appears on the edges of the white papers and the large book, momentarily pushed aside. The open volume may be the 1643 Amsterdam edition of the Bible that Turner owned.
