Jacques Etienne Victor Arago (1790-1855)

THE DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS RELATING TO FREYCINET'S VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD IN THE CORVETTES URANIE AND PHYSICIENNE, 1817-20 Freycinet's second circumnavigation took him and his crew from Toulon in September 1817 to Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Mauritius (Ile de France), La Réunion (Bourbon), the West Coast of Australia, Timor, the Caroline, Marianne (Ladrones) and Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands, Port Jackson (Sydney), and around Cape Horn. Shipwrecked off the Falkland Islands, they were rescued and taken up the east coast of South America to Rio before returning to Cherbourg in October, 1820 The principal object of Captain Freycinet's expedition was scientific: he was charged to investigate 'the figure of the earth', 'elements of terrestrial magnetism' and 'questions of meteorology' and his officers were also expected to make valuable additions to the existing tables of latitude and longitude, and to collect specimens for the Museums. Jacques Arago, the government draughtsman attached to the expedition, was charged with 'a faithful representation of all such specimens as their weight or liability to break would not allow them to bring away; and that he should take accurate views of the different coasts, which, besides the useful information they furnish to navigators, would have the advantage of occasionally offering agreable landscapes' and 'finally, it was to be expected that Captain Freycinet and his companions would add new particulars to the history of savage nations.' (Report made to the Academy of Sciences upon the Voyage etc., 1821) This same report proceeded to review the collection of drawings brought home from the voyage: 'one of the most remarkable that has been seen, both for the number and variety of subjects. It affords the strongest proof of the unwearied zeal and remarkable intelligence of M. Arago, the draftsman to the expedition. It consists of almost five hundred drawings, representing landscapes, views of the coasts, and subjects of zoology and botany; also of a considerable series of drawings of the natives of the different islands at which the expedition touched, of their costumes, of their habits, and weapons. The publication of a portion of the drawings contained in this rich portfolio, will present the most complete and interesting work of the kind, which any voyage has yet produced.' (Report etc., IX, Drawings) This official report perhaps exaggerates the significance of the drawings made on Freycinet's voyage, and clearly shows that the extraordinary artwork from Baudin's earlier voyage had been omitted, by neglect and circumstance, from consideration. Nevertheless, the coincidence of Arago's lively temperament and artistic roots (which, like the young Taunay's, drew from Fuseli), did produce a body of work which typified the new romantic vision of the Pacific World being produced by artists in the 1820s A selection of Arago's drawings as well as works by J. Alphonse Pellion, a midshipman on the Uranie, and Adrien Aimé Taunay, who joined the expedition as second draughtsman at Rio, were published in 1825 in the Atlas Historique which accompanied Freycinet's official account of the voyage. Arago himself had already published a group of his own drawings in his Narrative of a Voyage round the World (London, 1823). The later expanded French edition (J. Arago, Souvenirs d'un aveugle, Voyage autour du monde, Paris, 1846) was profusely illustrated, though with fanciful engravings at a considerable remove from the original drawings. Twenty-five of the original drawings and watercolours by Arago, Pellion and Taunay were later reproduced in Rose Freycinet's account of the voyage (R. de Saulces de Freycinet, Campagne de L'"Uranie" (1817-1820) etc., Paris, 1927). The present group of drawings and watercolours shares the same provenance (Claude, Baron de Saulces de Freycinet, Captain Freycinet's great-great-grand-nephew) as the previous group from Baudin's voyage. TENERIFE

細節

Jacques Etienne Victor Arago (1790-1855)

Vue de Ste. Croix de Ténérife, 1817
signed 'J^s Arago fecit.' and inscribed as title,
grey wash
11 x 15 7/8in. (27.9 x 40.3cm.)

There is a pencil sketch of Sainte Croix on the reverse

來源

as Lot 59

Freycinet anchored off Santa Cruz on 22nd October, 1817. His ships were quarantined due to the plague in the Mediterranean but took on fresh stores and weighed anchor on 28 October