20/8/2015 Paris

20/8/2015 Paris

Broken sleep, up early. Reset computer clock to Paris summer time just to stop my confusion with the watch/bus timetable. Discovered a free sight-seeing bus at the MNHM Gardens, which I will try either today or tomorrow (Friday) while the Museum archives are closed to researchers.

Today's main task is to go through the information on Nicolas-Martin Petit (scant though it is). Secondary task is to check again in Manuscript 1737 for any reference/drawing from Terra Australes or Nouvelle Hollandia. I have seen some of the Medusa paintings in this chapter used in the front page in the official voyage account.

*Special Note 1: It was now obvious that in the latter part of his career Lesueur was collating his drawings and paintings into a taxonomic text-book based on fish genera/order, and the collections of his drawing/painting were donated to the respective museums in that format, not in the chronological or geographic sequence that they were originally produced. This makes actually identifying what artwork/drawings were done during the Baudin voyage very difficult unless Lesueur noted the date or location on the artwork itself, which he only did on relatively few of his works. JB painstakingly noted and catalogued these for the Le Havre collection. It seems from her catalogue that only about 20-30 drawings can be attributed with any certainty to the “landings” in the Baudin voyage. She also identified the drawings from the general “Terra Australes” section of Lesueur's archive (based on dates??), collated into four boxes, which I was able to go through in 2011 attempting to identify the “tropical species” and therefore where on the Australian voyage they were likely to have been produced. Given they did not penetrate very far into the GBR before returning to France most of the Tropical Fish would have come from the Western Australian Coastline. The numbering of drawings in the boxes, particularly in box 4, was higher than that recorded in the published catalogue, suggesting that a second volume must exist.

I have no indication from the Paris MNHM manuscript collection of any of the “Terra Australes” notation used by J. Bonnemains. Either I have not seen those records or the notations were not part of the collection. Going through the MNHM collection again in 2015 I hit the same problems where Leseuer has chronologically scrambled the drawing to fit his genera/order groupings for his text book. There is also very little to guide where each species/drawings was from geographically. Failing better information then the JB categorisation (i.e. Charles ROUX & Jacqueline BONNEMAINS, 1984 catalogue) is likely to be the best available.

*Special Note 2: “Baudin in Australian Waters: The artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800-1804”(1988)  Edited by Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliot Forsyth, and Bernard Smith. 347 pages Melbourne Oxford University Press. This book contains a comprehensive colour pictorial catalogue of Lesueur’s and Petit’s existing artwork. (Apart from the "post-card" sized drawings and painting in Lesueur’s Manuscripts at the MNHM, which seem to have been missed). 

The Bonnemains et al book essentially describes the full collection of the Le Havre Natural History Museum.   Petit’s work is also documented but not pictorialy in “L’oeuvre ethnographique de Nicolas-Martin Petit per E.T. Hamy (L’Anthopologie – Semptembre Octobre 1891, no 5.) Sighted but not translated at the MNHM however the reference is included in the Bonnemains, Forsyth and Smith book.  (170 drawings/plates described). I cannot find any further manuscripts or drawings at the MNHM Central library. 

Given I have been through the drawings at Le Havre and the comprehensive catalogue edited by Bonnemains et al., as well as the Atlas by Lesueur and Petit (see references at end of this note),  then I have seen all the Nicolas-Martin Petit artwork from Australia that is likely to be available, without going to private collections.

Manuscript 1737. I went through this loose-leaf collection of notes and drawings as thoroughly as possible given that it is written in longhand script in both archaic French and in English and in both ink and later(?) in pencil.  It has been reworked a number of times, based on the layers of pencil notation, so the order of the pages is irrelevant chronologically.

However I did find a reference to Botany Bay and "Australis" in the text, and I found a small pencil sketch of a rowing boat with a man in the bow dip-netting for jelly fish. I the background there are a number of square rigged boats at anchor in what appears to be a substantial harbour. On the back was a (later?) pencil notation of Nouvelle Holland, therefore this could only have been Botany Bay. Leseuer and Peron published a text on jelly fish so possibly the artwork could be associated with that work.

The reference/illustration was the first concrete evidence in the MNHM Lesueur manuscripts of illustrations/art work from the Baudin voyage (plus the illustrations from the Reports and Atlas of the voyage; see below). The provenance of other paintings of fish in the Manuscripts will have to inferred from Bonnemains work at Le Havre.

Extra references sighted (published in French):

Voyage de découvertes aux terres Australes: exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l'empereur et roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendent les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804; [Historique] publié par dećret Impérial, sous le ministère de M. de Champagny et rédigé par M. F. Péron, ..., Volume 1 18## A Paris, De L'Imprimerie Royale

Voyage de découvertes aux terres Australes: exécuté par ordre de Sa Majesté l'empereur et roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendent les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804; [Historique: Tome second] par ordre de son excellence le Ministre Secretaire D'Etat de L'Interieur (redige en partie par feu M. F. Péron) par M.L.Freycinet, ..., Volume 2, 1816, A Paris, De L'Imprimerie Royale.

Voyage de découvertes aux terres Australes: exécuté sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendent les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804; Sous le commandement du capitaine de vaisseau N. Buadin [Navigation et Geographie] Par M Louis Freycinet...., Volume 3, 1815, A Paris, De L'Imprimerie Royale

Atlas historique : du Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes, by Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit. Volume 1 (containing the landform profiles and zoological plates)

and Vol II. By M Louis Freycinet. Large-format Charts referred to in Freycinet's Vol on “Navigation et Geographie”