Jacques Arago was a man of many and diverse talents. An intrepid traveller, he was also an accomplished watercolorist and marine draughtsman, as well as a prolific writer. He was employed as one of the official artists on Captain Louis de Freycinet’s officially-sponsored French expedition around the world aboard the Uranie. The expedition visited Oceania between 1817 and 1820, including five weeks in Port Jackson (Sydney) during November-December 1819.
Arago was born into a Republican family on 6 March 1790 at Estragel in the Pyrénées-Orientales in Catalan France, where his father was Treasurer of the Mint in Perpignan. He was the third of six brothers, all of whom distinguished themselves in various ways: the most famous of the brothers was Dominique François Jean Arago (1786-1853), known as François Arago, who was an eminent mathematician, physicist and astronomer. The Arago family suffered in various ways from their republican sympathies.
From an early age Jacques Arago showed himself to be of a restless, unruly and boisterous disposition. After leaving school in Perpignan, he was destined to a career in the army but was expelled from St Cyr after fighting an excessive number of duels. He then tried law but tired quickly of that, seeking to go into the navy aboard the Adonis. This change of career was no more successful and at the age of 20, with a sketch book and kitbag, he began his travels around the Mediterranean, visiting successively Corsica, Sardinia, Italy and the African coast.
Because of his skills as a draughtsman and through his brother François, he embarked in 1817 on Freycinet’s vessel the Uranie. In the course of Uranie’s voyage ’round the world’ Arago produced many illustrations on a diversity of subjects: portraits of Indigenous people, scenes of events, and also drawings of birds and animals. Many of these illustrations are to be found in the official Historical Atlas of the expedition (Louis Freycinet, Voyage Autour du Monde, Entrepris par Ordre du Roi … Exécuté sur les Corvettes de S. M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne Pendant les Années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, v. 3, Paris, Pillet aîné, 1825), together with those of the other official artist, Adrien Taunay, and of Alphonse Pellion, a midshipman on the voyage.
As well as his pictorial representations, Arago published in 1822, in the form of letters to a friend, a two-volume written account of the voyage, Promenade autour du monde pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, sur les corvettes du roi, L’Uranie et La Physicienne, commandées par M. Freycinet, par J. Arago, dessinateur de l’expédition (Paris, Leblanc,1822). In this ‘unofficial’ personal narrative, intended to complement Louis de Freycinet’s official account, Arago gave free rein to his personal commentary on the voyage and speculations concerning the question of human origins and race. Promenade autour du monde was the first account of the voyage to be translated into English in 1823: Narrative of a Voyage round the World, in the Uranie and Physicienne Corvettes commanded by Captain Freycinet, during the Years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, London, Treuttel and Wurtz, 1823.
After this publication, Arago began a new career in France as a writer for vaudeville and produced many plays and sketches, as well as other occasional writings. He also made a name for himself as a political caricaturist. In the 1830s the artist published a series of twenty-three political lithographies in La Mode in which he attacks the July monarchy.
In 1837 Arago became blind, the first symptoms of ophthalmological problems having manifested themselves after an illness in 1820 which had occurred when the Freycinet expedition was near the Mariana islands and had gradually progressed. He was obliged to resign his position as director of the Rouen theatres but his infirmity did not stop him from writing or continuing his travels. Thus in 1839 he returned again to his account of the Freycinet voyage and published an expanded version of his earlier work entitled Souvenirs d’un aveugle: Voyage autour du monde fait par ordre du Roi sur les corvettes de S.M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne, Hortet et Ozanne, Paris, 1839. His brother, François, provided a scientific introduction to this volume. The title of the work underscores the fact of Arago’s blindness. In his opening note Arago remarks that ‘n’avoir rien vu, c’est n’avoir rien à regretter. On ne perd réellement qu’après avoir possédé, et j’ai tant perdu!’ [to have seen nothing, is to have nothing to regret. One only truly loses what one has possessed, and I have lost so much!]. This edition contains 60 previously unpublished plates made from his drawings of the Indigenous people of Hawaii, and other Pacific islands, as well as of Western Australia and New South Wales, and includes detailed drawings of aspects of Indigenous life and customs. The work also contains scientific notes as well as vocabulary lists of the languages of all the places visited, except for New Holland: ‘A la partie ouest de la Nouvelle Hollande, nous avons eu si peu de rapports avec les quinze ou dix-huit sauvages qui se sont montrés, que nous n’avons pu, malgré les témoignages de bienveillance par lesquels nous cherchions à les rassurer, apprendre que ce mot: “Ayerkadé. Allez-vous-en.'[On the west coast of New Holland, we had so few contacts with the fifteen or eighteen natives who showed themselves, that we were unable, despite attempting to reassure them of our good intentions, to learn anything except this word “Ayerkadé. Go away”.’] (p. 504). The work was republished in 1843 with coloured illustrations and was a popular success, being republished six times until 1893. It was translated into English, Spanish, Italian and German and was one of the best sellers of the time.
As ardent Republicans, both Jacques and his brother François participated in the uprising in 1848, rescuing people injured on the barricades. François was briefly Head of State in 1848. On the overthrow of the Republic, both were to suffer because of their political beliefs. François ended his political career by refusing to promise allegiance to Napoleon III; he nevertheless continued in his role as Perpetual Secretary of the Académie until his death in October 1853. Jacques was to face exile in the same year.
In 1848 gold was discovered in California and Arago, attracted by the prospect of riches, joined a group of like-minded individuals, later nick-named the Aragonautes, and travelled with them to Valparaiso. There he parted company with his companions, travelling on to California. After spending two weeks in California he sailed for Tahiti and then returned to France in 1850, visiting Brazil on the way. He had not abandoned his Californian gold-mining plan, however, and in 1851-52 he co-founded a company for this purpose but did not himself travel back to California.
It is around this time, that he and the young Jules Verne met. The future writer of the Voyages extraordinaires had read Souvenirs d’un Aveugle and met Arago at the beginning of 1851, regularly frequenting the latter’s salon where he met travellers, writers, engineers and geographers. The exploits that Arago recounted and the stories that Verne heard in this milieu cannot fail to have fed his imagination and many references in Verne’s work evoke Arago’s influence.
In 1853, challenged by a friend, Jacques Arago published Voyage autour du monde sans la lettre A, also entitled Curieux voyage… . This is a short volume of descriptions of his travels and philosophical musings in which he avoids using the letter A. In the same year, Jacques Arago published his autobiographical novel, Une vie agitée (Souverain, 1853). Unfortunately for his political safety in France, Jacques also wrote verses criticising Napoleon III whom he called the “bandit”. He left France after a copy of Victor Hugo’s satirical pamphlet Napoléon le Petit (1852), directed at Napoleon III, was found in a search of his lodgings. He returned to Brazil, his fifth visit to the country, and died there of apoplexy in November 1855.
Image: wikicommons, from Arago, Souvenirs d’un aveugle, nouv. éd.1840, t.1.
Author: Margaret Sankey. Professor Emerita, University of Sydney, October 2025.
References
Arago, Jacques.1822. Promenade autour du monde, pendant les années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, sur les corvettes du roi L’Uranie et La Physicienne, commandées par M. Freycinet. Paris, Leblanc.
Freycinet, Louis. Voyage Autour du Monde, Entrepris par Ordre du Roi … Exécuté sur les Corvettes de S. M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne Pendant les Années 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820, v. 3, Paris, Pillet aîné, 1825)
Jacques, Guy. 2018. Jacques Arago… ce frère inattendu. Toulouse, Les Editions François de Galice & Les Editions Ixcéa.
James, David. 1948. ‘Jacques Arago and the Imperial Family of Brazil‘, The Americas, Vol. 5, No. 2, Cambridge University Press, 221-225. JStor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/977808
L’Abbé J,. Capeille. 1914. Le Dictionnaire de biographies roussillonnaises. Perpignan, J. Comet.
Laureilhe, Marie-Thérèse. 1952. ‘Jacques Arago, illustrateur du Voyage autour du monde de la corvette L’Uranie‘. In Bulletin de la Société de l’art français, 96-102.
Laureilhe, Marie-Thérèse. 1960. ‘Jacques Arago, auteur des lithographies politiques‘, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (with catalogue).
Legge, Carol. 1998. ‘Arago, Jacques-Étienne-Victor‘, Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature.
Liesen, Bruno. ‘Jacques Arago: littérateur, auteur dramatique et voyageur français (1790-1855)‘, on-line biography http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/169/1698155188.pdf. Accessed 18.04.2025.
Pohl, Jacques. 1974. ‘Les observations linguistiques de Jacques Arago‘, La Linguistique, Vol. 10, Fasc. 1, Presses Universitaires de France, 123-142. Accessed 09-08-2021.
Keywords
Artist, traveller, Terres australes, Indigenous people, playwright, blindness