THE VOYAGES OF BAUDIN AND FREYCINET (lots 100-108)
The French, with numerous colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean, had been slow to explore the Pacific. Voyages in the second half of the eighteenth century after Bougainville's had ended in failure or disaster. St. Allouarn was frustrated by the Great Barrier Reef, Dufresne was killed in New Zealand and La Pérouse, cautioned by Louis XVI not to lose any more French lives in the Pacific, was lost without trace in the Solomon Islands. D'Entrecasteaux, who led an expedition in search of La Pérouse, was imprisoned by the Dutch at Java.
Baudin sailed from Le Havre in October 1800 on the Naturaliste, Géographe and Casuarina with a complement of twenty-two scientists, ranging from hydrographers, geographers and astronomers to zoologists, botanists and 'artiste-peintres'. They were charged to explore the three-quarters of the coast of Australia not examined by Cook and to study, record and recover specimens for the National Museum of Natural History.
Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804)
Soldat d'infanterie malaise, Timor
Details
Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804)
Soldat d'infanterie malaise, Timor
inscribed 'Timor/fleury';
pen and ink and brown wash, unframed
10¾ x 8¼in. (27.3 x 20.9cm.)
Soldat d'infanterie malaise, Timor
inscribed 'Timor/fleury';
pen and ink and brown wash, unframed
10¾ x 8¼in. (27.3 x 20.9cm.)
Provenance
Claude, Baron de Saulces de Freycinet, Louis Freycinet's great-great-grand nephew.
Engraved
by Frères Lambert in F. Péron, Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes, etc., Atlas, Paris, 1824, pl. 40.