An Aboriginal man of King George’s Sound, Western Australia. Circa 1835.

A$1,650 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Watercolour on laid paper with watermark of a horse and rider and pair of scales, 200 x 148 mm (sheet); captioned in ink Nouvelle Hollande at bottom left, and with a foliation number 184 in the same hand at bottom right; the sheet is unmounted ( verso blank), and the drawing has survived in fine condition virtually in its original state; removal from a sketchbook at some point is confirmed by the slightly roughened top edge of the sheet, which also shows evidence of the original stitch holes. This watercolour sketch was made by an anonymous French artist, probably around 1835. It appears to be a conflation of several images by the voyage artist Louis Auguste de Sainson (1800-1887), which depict Indigenous people at King George s Sound (Albany), Western Australia. Sainson made his sketches in situ in 1826 during the Astrolabe s scientific round-the-world voyage under the command of Dumont d Urville. His drawings were reproduced as engraved plates in Voyage de la Corvette l Astrolabe (Paris: J. Tastu,1830-35), and elsewhere. The male figure wears a short animal-skin cloak characteristic of the type worn by the men in Sainson s King George s Sound drawings. His arms are outstretched, with the wrists limp and hands downturned, a highly distinctive gesture that appears to have been copied directly from the identical body language of several of the subjects in Sainson s famous drawing titled Port du Roi Georges. Nouvelle-Hollande. Un naturel montre à ses Compagnons les Cadeaux qu i

• Binding: Hardcover

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