31/8/2015 Paris

31/8/2015 Paris (last 5 days)

Up early and got four days of supplies from local Supermarket. . The Spanish Maison opens tomorrow and so does their dining room, so breakfast (petit dejeuner) and lunch (dejeuner) are taken care of; that is if I have read the French signs correctly. Only fly in the ointment is that I managed to talk my way in last time (as a resident of the nearby Maison du Provinces de France). I think that was because I was polite, unlike a lot of their students, and they simply got used to me as a regular customer. Technically I am pretty sure it is for residents and visitors (of residents), at least at the reasonable student prices.

Last day at the MNHM library so I will confirm/edit my photograph captions and check their catalogue one last time for anything I may have missed. I am pretty happy I have got everything I need for the MA project in terms of seed images and areas that I should retrace the artist journey. This is based on William Westall’s landscapes on the East coast and Petit/Lesueur’s landscapes/coastline profiles on the West coast.

I think Brown’s diary (biologist on the Flinders voyage) will be worth tracking down, although not a source of images it is a source for where they landed and where Bauer did his sketching. This was the "hint", both from the London NHM librarian, and from my own reading. Information on where Petit/Lesueur paintings were done can be derived directly from their Atlas and from (English translation) Baudin’s journal.

Arrived at 2.00 pm and both MS1722 & Ms1728 were available. I went through MS1722 and located the missing photo (I have no explanation for how this happened). I checked MS1728 and located the confusion in numbering (and marked one photo as missing). I photocopied four pages (in French) from Roux and Bonnemains (1984) “Les poissons  du Voyage de decouvertes aux Terres Australes (1801-1804) etudies per F. Peron et C.-A. Lesueuer”, Annexe 1, that related directly to catalogue numbering of the drawings/paintings from the Australian voyage held at La Havre. I only got to see part of the collection of these images during my feasibility study trip. 

Luckily for me J. Bonnemains, with a variety of co-authors, has published images of the full Le Havre collection in a number of French and English sources. I have seen all these publications, plus examples of the original works of both Lesueur and Petit, as well as located the published compilations of their 1801-03  artwork, so I have completed the basic task I set out on.

According to the ever helpful  (and patient) librarians, apparently, I can check the MNHM catalogue online and “copy screen” to get a record, rather than copy by hand. I will do this back in Australia. 

At 4.30 pm I said my goodbyes to the library staff and was off. Usual Bus trip back to the Cite and then a quite beer to celebrate a job well done. Tonight I transfer copies of everything onto both my external hard-disks for safekeeping i.e., three levels of redundancy.