novelist and sketcher, attended Sydney Girls High from 1883-88. Inevitably she sketched in youth but largely as a hobby, a relief from the demands of her writing or as a socially accepted activity. Her diary entry for 21 October 1891 notes:
Painted a little in the afternoon – a water mill scene on a tambourine for the bazaar. I hate tambourines and frying pans and such painted. It seems a debasement of Art. Heigho, I wish I could paint well. (Poole, p.79)
On 12 December 1892, she noted: 'Painted a tambourine so badly I must do it again’ (p.111).
Other entries include: painting arum lilies up the side of her 'opal’ (glass) on 4 August 1891, having proudly refusing Mrs Weiss’s invitation to join her painting class gratis that same day (p.72); working for an hour or two on an opal of a girl in a cornfield with a harvest moon behind as a Xmas present for her (secret) fiancé Herbert Curlewis on 18 November 1891 (p.83); and, on 16 February 1892, starting an opal for Ethel Pockley of 'a girl in a moonlit harvest field’ as a wedding present (Poole, p.92). On 30 March 1892, she finished painting an opal for her friend Nell {Hague Smith?}. On 13 February 1892 she and Nell, with three other students, had a painting lesson with Mr Howes , an 'impressionist’, but on 27 February she and Nell were the only students – and Nell was ill and went home early (p.94).
Turner’s entry for 8 February 1892 notes, 'Painted a little at the background of Red Riding Hood, I have not touched it for a week’, while that for 25 February 1892 includes '...afternoon daubed a little at Red Riding Hood for appearance’s sake’. (She had just broken off her secret engagement.) Although never a dedicated painter, when her and Lil’s magazine the Parthenon folded, the sisters began teaching children and Ethel also taught art: 30 March 1892, 'Mrs Bear is coming to me for painting — two guineas a quarter’; 10 August, 'Gave Miss Archibald a painting lesson’ (Poole, pp.98, 106); 7 October, gave up teaching children but gave Miss A her lesson (108); 17 October, 'Gave Miss A. her last lesson and she paid her two guineas and thanked me for teaching her’. Turner had been employed to write a column in the Illustrated Sydney News – a far more congenial occupation (p.109). From then on writing seems to have taken over as her profession (with a little singing). Nevertheless, on holiday in Tasmania on 17 January 1894, she 'made fearful and wonderful sketches of Mt Wellington with colours that never were on land or sea’ (136).
An Ethel M. Turner painted a watercolour of Mount Morgan mine, 41.2 × 74.5 cm, between 1906 and 1913 (National Library of Australia).
