LA PEROUSE EULOGY

29. [LA PEROUSE] [VINATY, J.A].

Éloge de la Pérouse…

Octavo, 46 pp., in recent blue paper boards with morocco label. Paris, Firmin Didot, 1823. Very rare eulogy to La Pérouse published some thirty-five years after the disappearance of his two vessels, and a scant three years before the clues to the loss of the Astrolabe and the Boussole were discovered by the sandalwood trader Peter Dillon.

Vinaty (sometimes ‘Vinati’) prepared the work for the Académie des Jeux-Floraux of Toulouse, where the eulogy won their prize l’Eglantine d’Or. The work is not only testament to the enduring importance of La Pérouse in the French-speaking world, it is also an interesting document of its time, because Vinaty shows a willingness to skip over the years of the Revolution and the rule of Napoleon. He is at pains to re-assert a continuity with the glory of France under Louis XVI, in the process presenting La Pérouse as a truly great French hero, but also as one capable of honouring the memory and achievements of Cook (a lengthy passage, for instance, praises La Pérouse for raising a suitable memorial above the tomb of Cook’s successor Captain Clerke in Kamchatka). Throughout, the tone is pure Restoration, underlined by his quoting from the great exile writer Chateaubriand.

The work’s rarity is borne out by Ferguson, who first located a copy in the Edward Weber Allen collection in California in time for the addenda to volume II of his bibliography; the copy in the State Library of New South Wales was added with a revised note to the full Addenda volume of 1986. The work is also noticed in McLaren’s Lapérouse in the Pacific, who added a copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Otherwise, Vinaty’s work is not noted in many standard references (it is a surprising omission from Forbes’s Hawaiian National Bibliography); nor is it listed in important collections such as Kroepelien and Hill.

Ferguson, 923b (rev); McLaren, ‘Lapérouse in the Pacific’, 875; not in Forbes.

$3500 [3902034 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at

SEARCHING FOR LA PÉROUSE: FIRST ACCOUNT OF THE D’ENTRECASTEAUX EXPEDITION

30. LABILLARDIERE, Jacques Julien Houtou de.

Rélation du Voyage à la Recherche de La Pérouse… see description and illustrations at

Two volumes, quarto, and folio atlas; text volumes uncut; the atlas with engraved title, folding chart of the voyage and 43 engraved maps, and plates; text in marbled papered boards, atlas in contemporary quarter calf with marbled paper sides. Paris, H. J. Jansen, 1800 [Atlas volume dated 1817 on title-page].

The superbly illustrated narrative by the naturalist on the d’Entrecasteaux expedition, in which Australia was fully circumnavigated, if sometimes at a distance, and the islands surrounding investigated for traces of La Pérouse. Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834), was a botanist and doctor of medicine, who had travelled widely in the Middle East: he was just finishing up his important botanical study of Syria when he was appointed to the d’Entrecasteaux voyage. He remains an important figure in early Australian science as the author of the first extensive monograph on Australian botany.

The voyage spent many months on the coasts of Western Australia, just a year after Vancouver’s visit, and made two long visits to Tasmania, charting, botanising and exploring the coasts. The visits are remembered in numerous place names, most notably Recherche Archipelago and Recherche Bay, named for the expedition’s ship. Labillardière’s account is one of very few eighteenth-century accounts of Australian exploration, and the only major French account of the continent in the early settlement period to be published in the same century. The important narrative based on the commander d’Entrecasteaux’s papers did not appear until 1808, once the First French Republic had been well established.

In this set the Atlas volume is present in the 1817 reissued version, from the same printing as its appearance in 1800 but with a new title-page. Published on its own, it may well have been produced to accompany text volumes that remained in print from the earlier edition. The publication is noted (without particular comment) by the McLaren bibliography and recorded by Ferguson from copies in the Mitchell Library and the Tasmanian parliamentary library.

The work is particularly interesting for its descriptions (and illustrations) of Tasmania, Tonga, New Caledonia, and New Guinea, and the atlas contains outstanding views of these areas, their inhabitants, and native artefacts by the official artist Piron. Included is the famous engraving of the black swan. the first large depiction of the exotic Australian bird. Fourteen superb botanical plates, all by or produced under the direction of Redouté, the most famous of all botanical artists, include two of Eucalypts and two of Banksias. There are three fine bird studies by Audibert.

MARINE LITHOGRAPHS BY DUMONT D’URVILLE’S ARTIST

31. LE BRETON, Louis.

La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton…

Oblong album measuring 245 x 335 mm., title-page and twelve tinted plates, fine in original decorated papered boards. Paris, Théodore Lefèvre, circa 1856.

A particularly attractive French lithographic album of marine scenes by a seasoned voyage artist. As the title boasts, Louis Le Breton served as artist on Dumont d’Urville’s second voyage to the Pacific and Antarctic during 1837-1840. He was taken on in 1837 as assistant surgeon on board the Astrolabe. Since he showed a talent for drawing, Ernest Goupil, the official artist on board, took him under his wing and began to train him as a painter. When illness struck the crew of both ships in 1838, Goupil became one of the victims, dying in January 1840 in Hobart Town. Dumont d’Urville then appointed Le Breton as the expedition’s artist; on their return to Paris the drawings of both Goupil and Le Breton were used for the magnificent lithographs in the huge publication of the official account of the voyage.

From 1845 to 1847 Le Breton took part in an expedition to Madagascar, and thereafter devoted himself to depicting marine subjects for the French Navy, specialising - as here - in lithographs depicting naval forces, ships and boats, sea landscapes and ports. He transferred to the Department of Maps and Charts in Paris, where he remained until his death in 1866.

The album comprises thirteen lithographic plates, including the romantic pictorial title-page depicting mariners wrecked upon the rocks. Five scenes depict the French and British at sea during Crimean War engagements of 1854; namely Friedland in consort with a British warship entering the Bosphorus, the arrival of the Anglo-French fleet at Kalamita, bombarding the defences of Sevastopol, and the British gunboat Agamemnon tackling a gale in Sevastopol harbour. The last Crimean lithograph is an especially dramatic rendition of the port of Balaclava viewed from the clifftops with archaic ruins in the foreground. Other marine scenes of interest include Galilée, a fully rigged naval paddle-steamer, Brasilian clipper l’Impératrice rounding the Cape, an American barque at La Havre and the enormous gunboat Napoleon half rigged, resting at anchor.

Polak, 5516, noting only 10 plates.

$3750 [4202828 at hordern.com] see description and illustrations at