• Title
  Massacre d’une femme par les sauvages, [ca. 1802-ca. 1804 / drawn by Nicolas-Martin Petit]
• Creator
  Nicolas-Martin Petit, 1777-1804
• Call number
  MPG/233
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  [ca. 1802-ca. 1804]
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Drawings
• Reference code
  9623509
• Physical Description
  1 drawing - pen and ink - 21 x 33 cm.
  
• Collection history
  Sold by auction in Paris, November 2017 by Baron Ribeyre & Associés. Count Eric de Gourcuff and his wife Yolaine de Gourcuff (nee Suyrot de Mazeau), by descent. Pauline de la Roche Saint-Andre (who married Charles Marie de Suyrot (1787-1880), by descent. Henri-Charles De la Roche St. Andre after 1840 and before 1882. Captain Louis de Freycinet 1815. Nicolas-Martin Petit and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur 1802-.
• Scope and Content
  A pen and ink sketch of an Aboriginal woman being competed for by two groups of 9 Aboriginal men, with five figures on the left and four on the right by Nicholas-Martin Petit, created during the Baudin expedition to Australia, 1800-1804.
  
  The central figure of a woman is front facing with seven of the men pulling on her arms. One of the men is holding his woomera above his head and another is pulling her hair. There is scarification figured on her torso.
  
  At the bottom of the sheet there is a series of sketches being several renderings of a foot in pencil and ink, and a left profile of a man's face.
  
  On the verso of the sheet there is a further set of sketches being a man with a top hat, a trousered male body, a half-portrait of a woman and a distant view of a castle.
  
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Artist died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Published Information
  Voyage autour du monde : entrepris par ordre du roi ... exécuté sur les corvettes de S.M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820 ... / par M. Louis de Freycinet ... Paris : Chez Pillet Aine, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1824-1839. Held at: D Q82/8-15. Highly important works of art, the Baudin Expedition to Australia (1800-1804) / Anne McCormick and Derek McDonnell. Sydney: Hordern House, 2018.
• Description source
  
  Titled below drawing.
• Variant title
  
  Translation: Massacre of a woman by the savages.
• General note
  
  In Louis de Freycinet's "Voyage autour du monde : entrepris par ordre du roi ... exécuté sur les corvettes de S.M. l'Uranie et la Physicienne ... Atlas Historique of 1824-1844", plate no. 104 titled, “Port-Jackson, Nlle. Hollande: cérémonie préliminaire d’un mariage, chez les sauvages” is a composite image of this "Masssacre d’une femme par les sauvages" and another sketch of "Aboriginal woman being competed for by two rival groups of three Aboriginal men".
  Presumably Freycinet, who sailed with Baudin, had access to these drawings when compiling the account of his own, later voyage, which anchored in Sydney in 1819. The handwritten inscription at top right of this image confirms this; it reads: “No. 23 au trait simple complete a la composit[ion] avec la figure No. 23 (bis)” [Translation: A simple line drawing completed as a composition with the drawing at no. 23].
  
  Source:
  Library correspondence file.
  Highly Important Works of Art. The Baudin Expedition to Australia (1800-1804), exhibition and sale catalogue, Deutscher and Hackett and Hordern House (2018)
  
• Signatures / Inscriptions
  
  Paper watermarked “Budgen 1801”.
  Top centre: “Nouvelle Hollande”.
  Top right hand corner: “No. 23 au trait simple complete a la composit[ion] avec la figure No.23 (bis)” [Translation: A simple line drawing completed as a composition with the drawing at no. 23].
• Attributions / conjectures
  
  The work is unsigned but is a composition of, and relates to, the published plate “Port-Jackson, Nlle. Hollande: cérémonie préliminaire d’un mariage, chez les sauvages” attributed to Sebastien Leroy, after Nicolas-Martin Petit.
• Date note
  
  No date. Date based on the paper watermark dated 1801, and the period Baudin's New Holland Expendition was in Sydney during 1802, to the year of Petit's death in 1804.
• Subject
  Aboriginal Australians--Rites and ceremonies.
  Aboriginal Australians--Implements.
  Women, Aboriginal Australian.
  Aboriginal Australians in art.
  Baudin, Nicolas, 1754-1803
  Voyages of exploration.
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE13240557

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