Lot 22: Naba-Leba, Roi de Solor

Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777-1804)
Naba-Leba, Roi de Solor
with inscription 'Drawn by PETIT TIMOR Roi de L'isle SOLOR for Atlas to Peron 8' on the mount
watercolour on paper
8 x 6 5/8in. (20.3 x 16.7cm.)

Pierre-Bernard Milius.
Peter Shand-Kydd.
Anon. sale, Christie's, 26 Oct. 1988, lot 80 (part).
Private collection, Australia.
Anon. sale, Christie's (Melbourne), 30 Nov. 1992.
Private collection, Australia.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
There is another version of the portrait in the Lesueur Collection, Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre (17 005-1). E.-T. Hamy lists this watercolour and a sketch in his study of Petit's work ( L'Oeuvre ethnographique de Nicolas-Martin Petit Dessinateur à bord du "Géographe" 1801-1804 in L'Anthropologie, 2, 1891, p.615 '73. Esquisse, papier huilé. 74. Aquarelle originale.'). The watercolour is the model for plate XXV in the Atlas to Péron's Voyage .

The present watercolour was originally in the collection of Pierre-Bernard Milius, Second Officer under Hamelin on the Corvette Le Naturaliste . Milius was promoted to Captain at Timor in 1801 and, after leaving the expedition to recuperate from an illness, took command of the Géographe after Baudin's death at Mauritius in 1803. The portrait was included in a group of 76 drawings from the voyage which accompanied Milius's Récit , his manuscript journals for 1800-1804 (Christie's, 26 Oct. 1988, lot 80). The Récit and majority of the drawings, excluding the present and following lot, were resold Christie's (Melbourne), 30 Nov. 1992, and are now in a private collection, Australia.

Baudin sailed from Le Havre in October 1800 with a complement of twenty-two scientists, ranging from hydrographers, geographers and astronomers to zoologists, botanists and 'artiste-peintres'. They were charged to explore the three-quarters of the coast of Australia not examined by Cook and to study, record and recover specimens for the National Museum of Natural History. In spite of difficulties which centred on Baudin's command and personality, the voyage continued from Mauritius to the west coast of Australia in 1801, and on to Timor and Van Diemen's Land in 1802. The French then ran into Flinders on the South Coast of New Holland (at Encounter Bay) in April 1802, only to discover that the Englishman had already surveyed a large part of the unknown coastline. They headed up to Port Jackson from where the Naturaliste returned to France, leaving Baudin's Géographe and the sloop Casuarina , now under the command of Louis Freycinet, to continue the expedition. They sailed around the southern and western coasts of Australia and back up to Timor and on to Mauritius (where Baudin died) before arriving back in France in March 1804.

Baudin visited Timor twice on his voyage, firstly from September-November 1801 after the Géographe and Naturaliste had surveyed the western coast of Australia and ahead of their voyage on to Van Diemen's Land and Port Jackson, and secondly from May-June 1803 on the voyage home. Petit had met the King, Nada-Leba, at a party given by the wealthiest landowner of the island during the first visit in 1801, and Péron described the local costume and Petit's sitter in his official account: 'L'Habillement des hommes riches consiste en un caleçon et une pagne et par dessus cela, une petite robe-de-chambre d'indienne ... Cette coiffure se compose d'une sorte de diadème de toile de coton, étranglé en plusieurs endroits de son pourtour, de manière à former des coques bouffantes; des deux côtés de ce bandeau circulaire s'élèvent deux larges ailes aplaties, dont l'ensemble figure grossièrement un croissant. L'objet de ce bizarre échafaudage est effectivement de représenter ce croissant jadis si redoubtable, car ce roi de Solor, ainsi que la presque totalité de ses sujets, est mahométan. Derrière ce diadème pendent deux grandes barbes de même étoffe qui desendent jusqu'aux reins et peuvent flotter en liberté.' (F. Péron, Voyage aux Terres Australes ... , Historique , Paris, 1816)

Baudin had taken three 'artiste-peintres' on the voyage, Milbert, Lebrun and Garnier, and all three were amongst the large group of disaffected scientists and crew who left him at Mauritius in 1801. Nicolas-Martin Petit and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, who had been taken on as assistant gunners at Le Havre, were immediately appointed draughtsmen to the voyage in their place, with Petit given responsibility for landscapes and inhabitants and Lesueur animals. Petit, the son of a Parisian fan-maker and probably one of 'les rapins' who attended David's studio, had an artistic background and some training but Lesueur appears to have had little, if any.

On his return to France, Petit had presented the Professors at the Museum of Natural History with his portfolio of 'portraits of the men and women of Timor, of New Holland, and of the Cape of Good Hope' and was granted a year's leave to perfect his drawings and recover his health. He died in 1804 following an accident, his wounds aggravated by a gangrenous condition inherited from the voyage, and many of his drawings were subsequently dispersed. A large portfolio of his work was later recovered in Le Havre and is now in the Lesueur Collection, Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre. A further group of Petit and Lesueur's voyage artwork was retained by Louis-Claude de Saulces de Freycinet who completed and augmented the official account of Baudin's voyage after Péron's death (for which see Christie's, 16 July 1993, lots 59-66A, and 26 Sept. 2002 ,'The Freycinet Collection'). Along with these sheets from Milius, Petit and Lesueur's original artwork also illustrates other journals by expedition members, from Baudin's own Journal to Bory de Saint Vincent's Voyage and the journals of midshipmen Boullanger and Bougainville.