Lot Essay
Les Sauvages de la Mer du Pacifique was a twenty-panel set of scenic wallpaper designed in 1806 by Jean-Gabriel Charvet for the Manufacture de Papier Peints et Tissus Joseph Dufour et Cie in Mâcon, France. The series was the company's biggest sucess and proved to be especially popular in the United States. The panels were based on the reports of Captain James Cook, who first sailed from England to the South Seas in 1769 and eventually became the first European to have contact with eastern Australia and the Hawaiian Island. He died in Hawaii in 1779 during a skirmish with the native people.