The Firm

Founded in 1987, Cabinet Eric Turquin, experts in Old Master Paintings, shares a relationship of trust with the auction houses, based on a common passion and shared interests. This dynamic collaboration between different art market professionals has led to exceptional discoveries and multimillion-dollar auctions, electrifying the art market while constantly enriching the history of art. 

Each year, nearly twelve thousand paintings are appraised and represented by Cabinet Turquin, exceptional works have been discovered, such as a previously unknown self-portrait by Artemisia Gentileschi, now exhibited at the National Gallery in London. These exciting discoveries and spectacular sales records have impacted the market for Old Master Paintings.  Surrounding himself with the best Eric Turquin combines his long experience with the talents of the younger generation, whom he endeavours to train, thus revealing new talents, experts, dealers, and art historians, the future actors of the art market.

Eric Turquin, the founder of the firm, inherited from his family of farmers and landowners the culture of hard work and a job well done, which would be decisive for his career. After a Master's degree in law and studies in Art History at the École du Louvre, where he specialized in Contemporary Art, Eric Turquin turned to Old Master Paintings, a more demanding discipline but also more fruitful in the long term. It was at Hôtel Drouot, with Paul Touzet, at the time the greatest connoisseur of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters in Paris that Eric Turquin truly trained as an expert. 

In 1977, he became a certified auctioneer and then a lecturer at the Musée du Louvre: over the course of two years, exploring the rooms of the museum, he became perfectly familiar with the paintings. Having been noticed by Derek Johns and Peter Wilson, he was recruited by the latter in September 1979 to work in the paintings department at Sotheby's London, where he was named director in 1985. Working alongside the most renowned specialists, experts and former curators, such as Philip Pouncey and Niel MacLaren, Eric Turquin perfected his knowledge of European painting. He also discovered the "picture meetings", weekly sessions where paintings are examined as a team, allowing the emergence of ideas and attributions. 

It is this method that Eric Turquin has used and developed, and one that he still applies today.

In 1987, Eric Turquin decided to establish himself as an independent expert in Paris at the invitation of Bruno de Bayser, who had already created his own office for Old Master Drawings on the rue Sainte Anne. Cabinet Eric Turquin was founded in the same building, with its own team and a research department specializing in Old Master Paintings, independent from the auction houses, concentrating on the core business of valuations and appraisals.

Our profession is above all our passion. A passion that is both exciting and exhilarating because our role as experts lies between detective work and documentary research, chasing clues in the paintings and their frames, and looking for connections between different artists, using science, experience and cooperation. We thus find, depending on the work; the origin, the author, the school, the subject of a painting, and even its original beauty with the help of our restorers. Between the past and the future of the work, between the brushstroke of the artist and the knock of the auctioneer's hammer, the appraisal makes it possible to restore the value of a work at the end of a fascinating investigation. Our profession is also a true human adventure, thanks to our years of relationships of trust and exchanges with auctioneers and art historians. Appraising works of art implies experience as well as service, both of which allow us to solve together any difficulties the auction houses may encounter.  We also take great pride in transmitting our vision, passion, rigor and respect for works of art to young auctioneers. Our profession is also a shared effort, the main attraction of which is the contribution to the development of art history. Discoveries, rediscoveries, elimination of forgeries, we bring together the fragmentary elements, find the missing pieces and shed light on the shadowy areas in the career and corpus of the artists.

Our independence, which for us is essential, is the guarantee of truly bespoke advice that we provide to our clients, whether they are auction houses or individuals. We are not bound to any one auction house, which ensures us a total freedom regarding the appraisals done for our clients, without any constraint or conflict of interest. Our clients are also assured of being covered by confidentiality: in no way whatsoever is the name of a seller or a buyer revealed without their authorization.

The exactitude of science, physical or chemical analysis, is at the service of our “eye” and our expertise, making it possible to support an attribution, to confirm an intuition, or on the contrary to refute a hypothesis.

Infra-red examination, revealing the areas charged with carbon, reveals the underlying drawings made with black stone or charcoal: this practice is particularly fruitful on Flemish Renaissance paintings where the thick white undercoat covering the wood panel contrasts fully with the drawing revealed.

As for ultraviolet light, highlighting the unsaturated pigments, it brings to light any recent restorations.

Special attention is paid to the support upon which the paintings are executed in order to determine their origin. Wood panels, which travelled very little before the 19th century, are easily identifiable, but we also resort to dendrochronology if we need an exact dating.

The systematic use of strong magnifying glasses and, more rarely, microscopes, also allows us to detect minute details while sharpening our eye. As forgers rely on technological advances to deceive science, the eye of the expert is indispensable in unmasking such forgeries.