Aborigines in Landscape

Pierre Antoine Marchais was an artist on the 1817 French expedition aboard the ship URANIE, led by Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet. Accompanying the artists Jacques Arago and J Alphone Pellion, Marchais’ primary role was to prepare the expedition drawings for later engraving. This watercolour is a rare representation of Australian aborigines drawn from the firsthand experience of early European visitors to Australia.

Louis de Freycinet had previously sailed in the 1800-1803 Baudin expedition to explore the south and south-west coasts of Australia in the NATURALISTE and GEOGRAPHE, following which Freycinet published the first map to show a full outline of the coastline of Australia. In 1817, he commanded the URANIE, in which the marine hydrologist Louis Isidore Duperrey and seventeen other officers and scientists sailed to Ro do Janeiro to undertaken scientific research in geography, ethnology, astronomy, magnetism, meteorology, and the collection of natural history specimens. The expedition spent three years in the Pacific, visiting Australia, the Mariana Islands, Hawaii and other Pacific Islands and South America, and not withstanding the loss of the URANIE in the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, returned to France with substantial collections of natural history and with voluminous notes and drawings of the countries visited. The results of this voyage were published under Freycinet’s supervision, with the title of Voyage autour du monde fait par ordre du Roisur les corvettes de S.M. l’URANIE et al Physicienne, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820.