About
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Carl Mose was an art professor at Saint Louis University. He died in New Windsor, Maryland, in 1973. The statue St. Francis of Assisi was donated by Mrs. Alice Martin Turner as a memorial to her husband, Harry Turner. The gentle, nature-loving thirteenth-century saint represents much of what Mr. Turner was not. Turner had been one the city’s first automobile racers and dealers who had been indicted as a spy, for forgery, and for sending obscene literature through the mail. Mr. Turner divorced his first wife and married Alice, his business manager, who was involved in some of his business scandals. Harry Turner jumped from a barge and drowned in the Mississippi River in 1931, thirty years before Mose was commissioned by Alice Turner to produce this stylized statue.
Dimensions: 12′ x 6′ x 6′
Year Completed: 1962
Material: Bronze
Owner: City of St. Louis
Donor: Mrs. Alice Martin Turner
*Photo Courtesy of Forest Park Forever.