"Who was it you were buying a turkey for, Dick?" his father asked.

Date1916

Artist Ralph Pallen Coleman (American painter and illustrator, 1892–1968)

Illustration Citation"Thanksgiving Snow Shoes," by Ben Ames Williams, in St. Nicholas, November 1916

MediumCharcoal and chalk on paper

Dimensionscomposition: 20 5/16 × 14 7/16 in. (51.6 × 36.7 cm)
sheet: 21 5/16 × 15 1/8 in. (54.1 × 38.4 cm)

Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1987

Object number1987-125

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsDRAWING

Label TextIn this scene, the parents of a young boy are about to learn that he has spent money earned doing chores to buy a Thanksgiving turkey for the kindly maid when he realized her poverty.

A native of Philadelphia, Ralph Coleman attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial of Art, where he studied with Walter Everett. During World War I, he illustrated war-related posters and served as a ship camouflage artist. His work first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1919, and he went on to work for numerous publications over the next two decades, including Cosmopolitan, Liberty, and The Ladies’ Home Journal, illustrating fiction for such authors as Somerset Maugham and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the 1940s he produced a substantial number of portraits and paintings on religious themes, including murals and stained glass commissions. His 1942 painting The Eternal Christ, depicting Christ on a battlefield, was hugely popular in the climate of World War II and millions of copies were produced.