"PHALANGER GRISONNANT" Female et son petit.
(Female Ringtail Possum & baby)
FROM: "Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l’Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zelee,
exécuté par ordre du roi pendant les années 1837-1838-1839-1840";
Atlas zoologique, Mammifères, plate 16.
TECHNIQUE: Stipple engraving
JEAN-CHARLES WERNER (painted by)
(Douarnenez 1818 - Paris 1866)
Rare and very detailed engraving from Dumont d'Urville's "Voyage au pole Sud et dans l'Oceanie..."
An exquisite image of a female Ringtail Possum with baby; nine detailed sketches of the skull jaw and paws.
A superb image of this Possum specimen.
Stipple engraving on copperplate.
Printed on thick wove paper.
"GIDE Editeur Paris" blind stamp at centre bottom margin.
SIZE: 410mm(H) x 280mm(L) [copperplate]
550mm(H) x 355mm(L) [sheet/paper]
Excellent impression and attractive original hand colouring.
This print was issued for the subscribers and never bound in the volume.
Was a natural history artist and comparative anatomist for the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, where he contributed some 350 paintings of animals on vellum for the famous Collection des vélins between the years 1826 and 1856.
The Collection, initiated in 1631, contained work by the finest natural history artists in France, including Nicolas Robert and Pierre-Joseph Redouté.
Werner provided illustrations for the publication of Dumont d’Urville’s expeditions to Australia and the South Pacific, and also worked with Cuvier, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Henri Ducrotay de Blainville.
Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire named a species of monkey after him.
Was a draughtsman, lithographer and surgeon; he was born in Douarnenez, Brittany, on 15 January 1818.
He continued a family tradition by studying medicine although he combined this with a commitment to the sea
by taking his initial training at the Naval Medical School, Brest (1836-37).
Almost immediately after leaving Brest he joined the Astrolabe as 'Surgeon, 3rd Class’,
but early in the voyage his considerable abilities as an artist came to the appreciative attention
of the commander of the expedition, Dumont d’Urville, and brought him additional responsibilities,
especially after the death of Goupil , the expedition’s official artist, at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land,
on the second of the Astrolabe’s four visits to Australia or Australian waters (Raffles Bay and Port Essington on the northern coast,
March-April 1839; Hobart Town, December 1839-January 1840 and February 1840; Torres Strait, May-June 1840).
In 1844-45 Le Breton was in the Indian Ocean as surgeon on board the Berceau , where his drawings earned further praise,
but this voyage was interrupted by ill-health, a hasty return to France (1846) and a period of convalescence.
Le Breton resigned from his medical functions in 1848 and transferred to the Department of Maps and Charts in Paris where he remained until his death on 30 August 1866.
Barthélemy Lauvergne was one of his colleagues.
While on board the Astrolabe , Le Breton worked both in pencil and watercolour.
An album of pencil drawings (Municipal Library, Saint Brieuc, Brittany) contains a number of works from the Pacific,
although only two have been tentatively identified as being of Australian interest: a pair of studies of cannon appear
to be the source of a detail in a view of Port Essington lithographed for the atlas of plates illustrating the voyage,
while a sketch of a ship aground may represent the Astrolabe in Torres Strait.
A collection of 174 watercolours recording the entire voyage now (with two exceptions) known only from Le Breton’s own manuscript catalogue
contained two views each from Raffles Bay and Port Essington, eleven from Hobart Town, and nine from Torres Strait.
One of the Tasmanian scenes, a competent watercolour of a coach crossing Bridgewater,
survives in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the other is of a New Zealand subject.
Twenty-five unspecified watercolours from this collection were shown at the Paris Salon in 1841 but no critic appears to have commented on them.
It is also known that Le Breton made a number of natural history drawings during the voyage but no originals have been located.