An Exploration of the Fate of the Australian and Tasmanian Ethnographic Collections brought back by the Baudin Expedition, following the 1804 French Scientific Voyage to Australia [Australian and Tasmanian objects deposited at the Château de Malmaison]

Author: THIERRY VINCENT
The French Australian Review No 63 (Australian Summer 2017-2018): 3-25
https://doi.org/10.62586/TSHE5076

Explorer Nicolas Baudin was entrusted with assembling a collection of plants and animals for the Empress Josephine, some of which were delivered to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle and the rest to her château at Malmaison. However, on 29 May 1804 some Australian and Tasmanian objects were delivered to Malmaison to join the collection of other objects already stored there. This article explores the fate of these collections and suggests a new approach to determine the quality and importance of the ethnographic objects deposited at Malmaison, where they were kept during Josephine’s life-time and what may have happened to them after 1819 when many were sold to ‘enlightened and passionate amateurs’.

Keywords: Baudin expedition, Empress Josephine, Malmaison, ethnographic objects, Musée des Antiquités