item details
Louis François Lejeune; after; 1824
Ambroise Tardieu; engraver; 1826
Overview
This hand-coloured stipple engraving records the voyage to the 'South Seas' of the corvette La Coquille under the command of Louis Isidore Duperrey (1786-1865) and his deputy Jules Dumont D'Urville during the years 1822-1825. It is plate 43 in the eight-volume Voyage autour du monde published by Arthus Bertrand (1826) and is based on an 1824 watercolour by Louis Lejeune and Antoine Chazal which were in turn engraved by Ambroise Tardieu (1788-1841).
The purpose of the voyage was not exploratory but rather to add to hydrographic, botanical and ethnographic knowledge particularly of New Guinea and the Caroline Islands. La Coquille visited the Bay of Islands, New Zealand in April 1824, from which this scene was taken. The main value of the expedition record is the picture it gives of the influence of European arts, customs and beliefs on those of the Maori. The expedition took as its draughtsman an unpaid civilian, Francois-Louis Lejeune, whose work is lively and spontaneous though often awkward and naive. His work was revised by Antoine Chazal and then entrusted to Tardieu who passed them on to Bertrand.
The 'Kidikidi' of the title was a transcription of 'Kerikeri'. The French party stayed there on the night of 9 April 1824. One of the members, Jules de Blosseville, described the scene in a manner which conforms well with Lejeune's drawing. "The six houses are wooden and whitewashed. The one where the minister and several others live is very elegantly built. They are all surrounded by an eight foot wall. A solid gate, always kept closed with a big lock, prevents the natives from getting in to steal the plants growing nearby. The houses are also enclosed and palisaded, but the fileds....are unprotected by any palisade."
See: The Fletcher Collection, 'Ambroise Tardieu', http://www.fletchercollection.co.nz/item.php?id=549&details=1
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art September 2018