De la caverne ossuaire TOU-PAPAO-FATA, du Mout-Eana,
Île Taiti, Archipel de la Société, (Polynésienne).
[TAHITI, FRENCH POLYNESIA]
"VOYAGE AU PÔLE SUD ET DANS L'OCEANIE"
sur les corvettes L'Astrolabe et La Zélée exécuté par ordre du Roi pendant les Années 1837-1838-1839-1840
sous le commandement de M. Dumont-d’Urville; First Edition.
RAUNHEIM (Lithographed by)
after the original skulls photographed by BISSON.
under the direction of Mr. le Dr. DUMOUTIER.
Superb and rare lithograph depicting three front images of skulls and the same in profile.
Skulls found in Tahiti, French Polynesia.
Taken after the originals skulls photographed by Bisson.
Ultimately realised in the publication, Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans L’Océanie, the lithograph depicts skulls of indigenous from Tahiti,
produced by Pierre-Marie Alexandre Dumoutier (1797-1871), an anatomist and phrenologist who travelled with the expedition.
Dumoutier was commissioned by Dumont d’Urville to collect casts of the indigenous populations of each site visited over the course of the voyage.
The life casts were used to substantiate Dumont d’Urville’s belief in a stratified racial hierarchy among the inhabitants of the South Pacific region.
A pseudo-science popular in the 19th Century, phrenology involves the study of the shape and measurements of the skull to predict and determine variations in human temperament.
Predicated on the belief that the relative size of different areas in the brain dictated personality and character, phrenological research
was often enlisted to support prejudicial racial profiling and endorse colonialist imperatives.
In Dumoutier’s skulls, the figure becomes a specimen to be studied.
As art historian Stacy Kamehiro notes, while Dumoutier was convinced that all humans shared a common origin and cerebral physiology,
his work in the South Pacific was used as evidence to support the argument that each race displayed fundamentally different origins and characteristics.
This position is articulated in the text written by the entomologist Émile Blanchard (1819-1900) that accompanied the published lithographs.
Photography was seen to satisfy the same agenda.
The invention of photography occurred after Dumont d’Urville had set off.
Upon his return, he organised to have his research materials photographed.
This rare lithograph test, a first in terms of use of photography in Anthropology, was made from a daguerreotype by the Bisson brothers
and is an early attempt to reproduce for publication the material collected during French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville’s
1837-1840 voyage through the Pacific and the Antarctic circle on board the ‘Astrolabe’ and the ‘Zélée’.
SIZE: 358mm(H) x 550mm(L) [sheet]
This lithograph was issued for the subscribers and never bounded in the volume.