Pierre Jean François Turpin

Who was Pierre Jean François Turpin?

Pierre Jean François Turpin was a French botanist and illustrator. He is considered one of the greatest floral and botanical illustrators during the Napoleonic Era and afterwards. As an artist, Turpin was largely self-taught.

In 1794 he was stationed in Haiti as a member of the French Army. Here he met botanist Pierre Antoine Poiteau, through whom, Turpin learned botany, and in the meantime, created numerous botanical field drawings that were to become a basis of further study when the two men returned to France. In regards to their work in Haiti, they were able to describe approximately 800 species of plants. Turpin would have a working relationship with Poiteau throughout his career.

Through his collaboration with Poiteau and other naturalists, Turpin created some of the finest watercolors and illustrations of plants that are known to exist. The following are some of the works making use of Turpin's illustrations:

⁕Augustin Saint-Hilaire's Flora Brasiliae Meridionalis in three volumes

⁕Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert's Icones selectae plantarum.

⁕With Pierre Poiteau, he produced an updated version of Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau's Traité des arbres fruitiers.