Ross Sterling Turner (1847–1915) was an American painter and educator renowned for his Impressionist watercolors, which depicted landscapes, gardens, marine scenes, and floral subjects. Born in Westport, New York, he began his career as a mechanical draftsman at the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. Turner traveled to Europe in 1876, where he studied in Paris and Munich, and later in Florence, Rome, and Venice. Returning to America in the early 1880s, he settled in Boston, exhibited regularly at the Boston Art Club and Doll & Richards, and taught watercolor painting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Normal Art School. Closely associated with American Impressionism, he was part of the circle of Childe Hassam and the Appledore Island artists, and authored instructional works including Use of Water Color for Beginners (1886) and Art for the Eye. His paintings are represented in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston Public Library, Fogg Museum at Harvard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, and others.