After Jacques Arago, 1790 to 1855
Paris
1825
Stipple and aquatint, printed in color and finished by hand
Image 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches (22.2 x 28.6 cm), mat 14 x 19 3/4 inches (35.6 x 50.2 cm)
Provenance: Randy Nagatani, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; Lahaina Printsellers, Maui, Hawaiʻi
An awning is rigged across the deck of the corvette and the ceremony takes place beneath it, the priest in vestments standing at the center with his hand raised over a seated Hawaiian chief wrapped in white kapa. French officers in dark uniform and marines with muskets fill the left of the composition around a small table set with candles and greenery, while Hawaiian chiefs and attendants stand and sit at the right, several women seated on the deck in printed cloth in the foreground. Flags hang from the rigging behind the group and lie spread across the boards, and beyond the ship's rail the dry coastline of the island rises against a pale sky.
The plate records the baptism of Kalanimoku, the kālaimoku or chief minister of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which took place aboard the French corvette l'Uranie in Kawaihae Bay in August 1819 in the presence of Kamehameha II and Kaʻahumanu. It was the first recorded Christian baptism of a Hawaiian chief, and it happened within months of the death of Kamehameha I and the overturning of the kapu system, and before the arrival of the first American missionaries. The plate was engraved by Lerouge and Forget after Arago's watercolor and published in the atlas to Louis de Freycinet's Voyage autour du monde, Paris, 1825.
Jacques Arago was born in Estagel in 1790 and died in 1855. He sailed as draughtsman on the Freycinet expedition of 1817 to 1820 aboard l'Uranie and la Physicienne, and spent three weeks in the Hawaiian Islands in 1819, producing the drawings that became the principal French visual record of the islands at that moment. He published his own account of the voyage, Promenade autour du monde, and continued to write and travel after losing his sight. The original watercolor for this plate is in the Honolulu Museum of Art.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
After Jacques Arago, 1790 to 1855
Paris
1825
Stipple and aquatint, printed in color and finished by hand
Image 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches (22.2 x 28.6 cm), mat 14 x 19 3/4 inches (35.6 x 50.2 cm)
Provenance: Randy Nagatani, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi; Lahaina Printsellers, Maui, Hawaiʻi
An awning is rigged across the deck of the corvette and the ceremony takes place beneath it, the priest in vestments standing at the center with his hand raised over a seated Hawaiian chief wrapped in white kapa. French officers in dark uniform and marines with muskets fill the left of the composition around a small table set with candles and greenery, while Hawaiian chiefs and attendants stand and sit at the right, several women seated on the deck in printed cloth in the foreground. Flags hang from the rigging behind the group and lie spread across the boards, and beyond the ship's rail the dry coastline of the island rises against a pale sky.
The plate records the baptism of Kalanimoku, the kālaimoku or chief minister of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which took place aboard the French corvette l'Uranie in Kawaihae Bay in August 1819 in the presence of Kamehameha II and Kaʻahumanu. It was the first recorded Christian baptism of a Hawaiian chief, and it happened within months of the death of Kamehameha I and the overturning of the kapu system, and before the arrival of the first American missionaries. The plate was engraved by Lerouge and Forget after Arago's watercolor and published in the atlas to Louis de Freycinet's Voyage autour du monde, Paris, 1825.
Jacques Arago was born in Estagel in 1790 and died in 1855. He sailed as draughtsman on the Freycinet expedition of 1817 to 1820 aboard l'Uranie and la Physicienne, and spent three weeks in the Hawaiian Islands in 1819, producing the drawings that became the principal French visual record of the islands at that moment. He published his own account of the voyage, Promenade autour du monde, and continued to write and travel after losing his sight. The original watercolor for this plate is in the Honolulu Museum of Art.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
