Selling here is a bw print from the Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, Plates Botanique, (1816-1830), drawn by P.J.F. Turpin. French botanical artist and botanist.
Born in Vire, the son of a poor
artisan, Turpin received little formal education but was trained in the
elements of drawing by a local artist before joining the battalion of
Calvados and being posted to the French colony of Saint Domingue at the
age of 14. After the battalion was returned to France, he was attached
at Rennes as secretary and artist to General Charles Leclerc, brother of
Napoleon Bonaparte. Leclerc took a personal interest in his career and
had him promoted to sub-lieutenant of a cavalry regiment, in which,
however, Turpin never served; instead he obtained permission in 1794 to
return to Saint-Domingue, which was in the midst of revolution.
On
disembarking at Cap-Haitien, he was befriended by the self-taught
botanist and botanical artist Pierre Antoine Poiteau, who had been sent
to the colony as a plant collector by the Jardin des Plantes. Poiteau
taught him botany and the two friends collected and painted the tropical
flora of the island together, including a year on Ile de la Tortue when
they were sponsored by the American consul, Edward Stevens, a great
plant enthusiast. Their collaboration resulted in hundreds of
illustrated plates and a herbarium of several thousand specimens
representing about 1200 different species.
Poiteau left for the
United States near the end of 1800, but Turpin continued to make
botanical drawings for Stevens on the island of Saint Suzanne and at
Cap-Haitien. But with the death of his old protector, Leclerc, in 1802
Turpin was plunged into a state of utter destitution. Luckily, because
of his reputation among the colonists as an expert on medicinal plants,
the army's chief physician appointed him as a military pharmacist but
with no obligation to fulfil his duties. Shortly afterwards, in a
massacre of French colonists, his Creole wife and their two children
were killed, a fate he avoided by hiding in a crate of sugar on board a
ship that was set to sail. Having safely reached the United States,
Turpin visited Philadelphia where he met Alexander von Humboldt,
recently returned from his travels in South America, who asked him to
make drawings from his vast collection of plants, one of the first
commissions that Turpin undertook on being repatriated.
Reunited
with Poiteau in Paris, Turpin collaborated on some of the most important
botanical works of the period. These included their own six-volume
treatise on fruit trees, a study of cacti, and a flora of Paris,
although publication of the latter was suspended because of the
financial crisis created by the Napoleonic wars. Turpin also provided
the illustrations for the Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle by
Deterville and for works by Delessert, Savigny and Delisle,
Labillardiere, Ventenat and de Candolle, among others. Equipped with one
of the best microscopes of his time, he made many interesting
discoveries in plant physiology, which attracted the attention of the
Academies des Sciences and eventually led to his election as a member in
1833. He also published descriptions of several new genera and species
from his botanical collections in the Annales du Museum national
d'Histoire Naturelle, including Castela erecta, C. depressa, Cypselea humifusa and Thovinia paniculata. The genus Turpinia (Staphyleaceae) was named in his honour by Ventenat.
Easily erasable pencil marking. Size approximately 8x4 1/2.
The print was taken from a disbound book and will be sent in a backed envelope.