Alphonse Pellion, artist and naval draughtsman, was a midshipman aboard l'Uranie on Louis de Freycinet's three-year scientific and ethnographic expedition around the world in 1817–1820. Pellion assisted the official artists, Jacques Arago and Adrien-Aimé Taunay. On 18 November 1819, having sailed from Western Australia to Timor, the expedition arrived in Port Jackson, where the men were welcomed by Governor Macquarie. He entertained them at both Sydney and Parramatta and allowed artists and scientists alike to wander at will. William Lawson guided the surgeon-zoologist Quoy and the botanist Gaudichaud-Beaupré on an expedition over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst. De Freycinet had intended Arago to accompany them, but his place was taken by Pellion 'whose zeal, activity and courage never failed him in dangerous enterprises, and whose talents as a draughtsman rendered him equally proper for this mission'.
This group portrait of five Indigenous people from the Blue Mountains region is an illustration from the official account of de Freycinet’s 1817-1820 expedition, Voyage autour du monde, published in Paris in 1822.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Ted and Gina Gregg 2012
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