TURMEAU, JOHN (1777–1846), miniature-painter, born in 1777, came of a Huguenot family long settled in London. His grandfather, Allan Turmeau, was an artist. His father, John Turmeau, who married Eliza Sandry of Cornwall, was a jeweller in London, but it is probable that he also painted miniatures. The name of John Turmeau figures in the catalogue of the Royal Academy exhibition as early as 1772. ‘John Turmeau, jr.,’ studied in the school of the academy, and exhibited two miniatures (portraits) at the Royal Academy in 1794, his address being 23 Villiers Street, Strand. In the following year he sent two more miniatures from the same address, and he continued to exhibit occasionally in London till 1836; but long before that date he had removed to Liverpool, and had six portraits in the first exhibition of the Liverpool Academy 1810, of which body he was a member. His address was given as Church Street. In the Liverpool Academy exhibition of 1811 he had two portraits, one of which was of Thomas Stewart Traill [q. v.] In 1827 he was the treasurer of the Liverpool Academy, and he continued to exhibit regularly, residing at Lord Street, and in later years in Castle Street, where he died on 10 Sept. 1846. He was buried in the Edge Hill churchyard. At all these addresses he carried on the trade of a print-seller and dealer in works of art, as well as the profession of portrait-painter.
Most of Turmeau's work was miniature portrait-painting on ivory, which had all the perfection of finish, colour, and good drawing of the best school of that art. He also painted some portraits in oil, one of which, a portrait of himself, is in the possession of his grandchildren in Liverpool, who have also some exceedingly fine specimens of his work on ivory. Probably his best known portrait is that of Egerton Smith, founder of the ‘Liverpool Mercury,’ which was engraved in 1842 by Wagstaff.
Turmeau married Sarah Wheeler, and had nine children. A son, John Caspar Turmeau (1809–1834), after studying under his father, went to Italy with the idea of completing his education as a landscape-painter. Here he spent much time in Rome with John Gibson (1790–1866) [q. v.], to whom John Turmeau had shown much kindness when he was an apprentice in Liverpool. J. C. Turmeau had an architectural sketch in the Liverpool exhibition of 1827, and after his return from Italy practised as an architect in that town, where he died, unmarried, at his father's house in 1834.
[Private information; Lady Eastlake's Life of Gibson, p. 26; Exhibition Catalogues.]
TURNBULL, GEORGE (1562?–1633), Scots jesuit, was born about 1562 in the diocese of St. Andrews, and admitted to the novitiate in 1591 at the age of twenty-two. For thirty years he was professor at the college of Pont-à-Mousson, and he died at Reims on 11 May 1633. In answer to a work of Robert Baron [q. v.] on the scripture canon, he published at Reims in 1628 ‘Imaginarii Circuli Quadratura Catholica, seu de objecto formali et regula fidei, adversus Robertum Baronem ministrum.’ To this Baron replied, whereupon Turnbull published ‘In Sacræ Scholæ Calumniatorem, et calumniæ duplicatorem, pro Tetragonismo,’ Reims, 1632. Turnbull was also author of ‘Commentarii in Universam Theologiam,’ which was ready for the press when the author died.
[Gordon's Scots Affairs (Spalding Club); De Backer's Bibliothèque des Écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. vi.]
TURNBULL, JOHN (fl. 1800–1813), traveller, was a sailor in the merchant service. While second mate of the Barwell in 1799 he visited China, and came to the conclusion that the Americans were carrying on a lucrative trade in north-west Asia. On his return home he induced some enterprising merchants to fit out a vessel to visit those parts. Sailing from Portsmouth in May 1800 in the Margaret, a ship of ten guns, he touched at Madeira and at Cape Colony, which had recently passed into British hands. On 5 Jan. 1801 he arrived at Botany Bay. The north-west speculation turning out a failure, Turnbull resolved to visit the islands of the Pacific, and devoted the next three years to exploring New Zealand, the Society Islands, the Sandwich Islands, and many parts of the South Seas. At Otaheite he encountered the agents of the London Missionary Society, to whose zeal he bore testimony while criticising their methods. After visiting the Friendly Islands he returned home by Cape Horn in the Calcutta, arriving in England in June 1804. In the following year he published the notes of his travels, under the title ‘A Voyage round the World,’ London, 8vo. Turnbull's narrative is interesting, his criticisms being often acute and always temperate. He deals with a period when the Australian colonies were in their infancy and the South Seas little known. A second edition of the work appeared in 1813 with considerable additions. The first edition was published in an abbreviated form in ‘A Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ vol. iii. London, 1806, 4to.
[Turnbull's Voyage round the World; Edinburgh Review, 1806, ix. 332; Gent. Mag. 1813, i. 547.]
