Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

Charles-Alexandre LESUEUR
French 1778–1846
Aboriginal people in front of their huts
Naturels devant leurs huttes
1802–04
wash and pencil
Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, Le Havre inv. 16030.1
Historian Howard Morphy has argued that,
in their attempts to encounter Indigenous
Australians, the Baudin explorers sometimes
frightened them away, encountering only
their huts, fires and abandoned possessions.
In this drawing the two Aboriginal people by
the fire are apparently additions by Lesueur
to help fill out an otherwise empty scene.
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