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Highlights

Olive Turney (American 1847 – 1939)

19th Century Fine Art Legacy

"Olive Turney was a pioneering artist whose paintings reveal a deep love of nature." ("An Independent Woman" by Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, January 28, 1997) [1].

Olive Turney was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania in 1847, the daughter of Lucien Turney, a carpenter, and Julia Gorgas, a native of Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania [2] Her father moved the family to Lawrenceville in the 1840s, where he rented a home on Borough Street (now 41st Street), until he built the family home on 43rd Street c. 1851.[2] Their new home was three blocks from the Allegheny Arsenal, a munitions plant where Olive’s older sister Margaret was employed. A horrific explosion at the arsenal in 1862, during the early part of the Civil War, took 78 lives, including Olive’s sister Margaret.[2]

In 1865, the Pittsburgh School of Design for women opened and Turney enrolled in the first class; she was one of six students. [1, 3] The well-known Pittsburgh landscape and still-life painter, George Hetzel taught landscape painting there and Turney, described as one of its most talented, diligent and high-spirited pupils was to become one of his favorite students [1, 4]. Circa 1867, while she was still a student, Turney was chosen to became an instructor on Saturdays to allow an opportunity for students who could not attend the normal classes during the week. [1, 2]

George Hetzel had become so enamored with an area approximately 17 miles southeast of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that in 1867 he organized the first sketching trip into the Allegheny Mountains to paint along Paint Creek, Little Paint Creek, at Scalp Level. [1]. Very progressive for the time, Hetzel invited female students from School of Design [1]. Of course, Turney and the women artists, were chaperoned and one of their chaperones was Margaret Morrison Carnegie, the mother of Pittsburgh steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, a director of the school [1].

Turney graduated in 1872, winning a gold medal in oil in painting, the school’s highest honor [1]. She became a full-time teacher at the school and in 1874 took over the oil painting classes [1]. Just as she was a dedicated student, she was a dedicated teacher and later principal of the Pittsburgh School of Design. Her association with the school ended only when it was closed in 1904 [2]. In 1874, same year Turney took over oil painting classes at the School of Design, she and another Pittsburgh artist and “fellow” student at the School, Agnes Way, opened the first women’s studio on Fourth Avenue in Pittsburgh [1].

Pittsburgh artists, including Turney continued to visit the Scalp Level area up until the late 1800s, when the Johnstown flood of 1889, devasted the railroad service into Johnstown from the west. Prior to this time, passenger railroad service from Pittsburgh extended only as far as Johnstown; the artists would take wagons to their lodgings at Scalp Level. Most artists ceased coming by the early 1890s, when the Philadelphia based Berwind White Coal Company purchased the coal seams that lay beneath the area and began opening a series of underground mines. The company further disrupted the scenic landscape by building housing for its miners, now known as the Borough of Windber (Berwind spelled backwards).

Unlike the other Pittsburgh artists, Turney continued to visit the area to paint, even after the Pittsburgh School of Design for Women had closed. She had spent her years summering at the Lehman farm and she became very close with the family and would document their daily farming activities through her paintings, many of which were on display exhibited at the 1997 Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art exhibition in Johnstown, and later sold through the Bedford Fine Art Gallery in Bedford, Pennsylvania, roughly 40 minutes further east of Windber. [1]

The Lehman farm, lay far above the deep-mine openings and the bustling activities of developing town of Windber. Turney purchased one half acre of land from Adam Lehman and he, in turn, built her a two-room cottage in 1888 that she christened the “Sketchbox” [1, 2]. She continued to paint there every summer into the 1920s when she was in her 70s. [1] Turney had not only gained a cottage through the Lehman’s but also an extended family – she never missed the Lehman family reunions [1].

By the time she died in 1939, Turney had seen, and participated in, the transformation of the Pittsburgh School of Design for Women from a school that solely taught the ornamental design of textiles, carpets and wallpaper and other items that were produced by early Pittsburgh factories to a training center for Pittsburgh artists [1]. A true independent woman, Turney built a successful art career for herself and was a mentor to other notable Pittsburgh women artists.

Written by Joan Hawk, Researcher and Co-Owner Bedford Fine Art Gallery, October 6, 2025.

Use only with the permission of Bedford Fine Art Gallery.

References:

  1. ---- “An Independent Women,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1997, January 28, pp. D-1 and D-2, by Patricia Lowry, Post-Gazette Staff Writer.

  2. https://apps.pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/Turney_House_Nomination_Combined.pdf  Compiled by Carol Peterson, 2014. Accessed 09/30/25.

  3. Chew, Paul, A., 1994, Geo. Hetzel and the Scalp Level Tradition, George Hetzel Retrospective and The Scalp level Artists Exhibition, 26 March – May 8, 1994, Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, Pa.

  4. O’Toole, Judith Hanson, 2008, SCENIC VIEWS: Painters from the Scalp Level School Revisited Introduction, in, https://tfaoi.org/aa/8aa215.htm.

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Jerry & Joan - Thanks for your hospitality and helping us find this beautiful new piece for our home. Until next time...

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