New Zealand: Taonga, Weapons and Implements

Original title: ‘Nouvelle-Zélande’. Engraved by Ambroise Tardieu. Plate No. 40 from Louis Isidore Duperrey, Voyage autour du monde, exécuté par ordre du roi, sur la corvette de Sa Majesté, la Coquille, pendant les années 1822, 1823, 1824, et 1825 (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1826). Other lithographs from the series can be viewed here.

The following text comes from the catalogue for the exhibition Tirohanga Whānui.

This and the following seven prints were published in 1826 in Paris by Arthus Bertrand as part of the eight-volume atlas Voyage Autour du Monde. It records the 1822–25 voyage to the South Seas of the corvette Coquille under the command of Louis Isidore Duperrey (1786–1865) and his deputy Jules Dumont d’Urville.

The purpose of the voyage was not primarily one of discovery but rather to add to hydrographic, botanical and ethnographic knowledge, particularly of New Guinea and the Caroline Islands. The Coquille visited the Bay of Islands, Aotearoa, between 3 and 17 April 1824. On board as draughtsman was an eighteen year old unpaid civilian, Jules Lejeune, whose sometimes awkward watercolours were later revised by Antoine Chazal. They were then entrusted to the engraver Ambroise Tardieu, an employee of the French Government.

This image shows greenstone, bone and wooden carved weapons, implements and musical instruments. There are two axes, a patu, a fork made from a bone of Korokoro, chief of Kahuwera, three mere (clubs), an oar, a feeding tube, four flutes, a comb, four fishhooks, two carved waka huia, a kumete or bowl, a bailer, a tiki, earrings and a carved stick.

Of the items here arranged into an elegantly balanced composition by Chazal, five were drawn by Lejeune and the rest by unknown artists. It is likely that the objects were brought by Duperrey back to France where drawings were made of them.