painter, was born in Paris, son of the well-known painter Nicolas Taunay. Adrien and his brother Félix, also a painter, accompanied Nicolas and their uncle Auguste, a sculptor, to Rio de Janeiro in 1815 at the invitation of King John VI of Brazil to assist in the establishment of a Royal Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts. This never eventuated. When Louis de Freycinet arrived at Rio in command of the Uranie in December 1817, he and his wife Rose were provided with accommodation by the Taunays. Jacques Arago, chief draughtsman on the voyage who was also befriended by them, wrote in his Promenade autour du Monde (Paris 1822) that 'a whole family, all members of which cultivate the arts with success, lives unknown, and rather despised, in a half-savage country, where it hoped for patrons, and where it has found nothing but humiliations’. 'O Taunay!’ Arago later exclaimed, 'What could have induced you to come to Rio?’
When the Uranie left Rio in January 1818 Adrien Taunay was on board as assistant draughtsman. Arago noted that on 12 September when the ship was coasting alongside Dirk Hartog Island (Western Australia), Taunay was set ashore with three other crew members to make observations. An engraving after Taunay, Nlle Hollande: Baie des Chiens Marins Nid Gigantesque Trouv é sur l’Ile Dirck-Hatichs , appeared in the Atlas Historique par Messrs. Js Arago, A. Pellion &c. (Paris 1825), the plate volume of the official narrative of the expedition. This also included Taunay’s illustration of a native woman of Guam. Most of the other plates after Taunay in the Atlas were taken from his coloured drawings of Mollusca and other marine invertebrates, including examples found at Port Jackson when the Uranie was there in November-December 1819.
Taunay was also responsible for the transparencies of George III and Louis XVIII painted for a dinner on board the Uranie to thank Sydney for its hospitality. These were noted by Rose de Freycinet as being by 'a young man on board who knew how to draw’, the adjective clearly indicating the 16-year-old Taunay. As well, two plates in Rose de Freycinet’s published Journal (1927) are after Taunay’s drawings.
On the return journey to France, Taunay disembarked at Rio in July 1820. While in port Arago repeated his charge of local indifference to the arts: 'if [the Taunays’] pictures and statues are not appreciated there, so much the worse for the Brazilians!’ After Auguste Taunay died at Rio in April 1824 Nicolas returned to Paris, but Adrien Taunay stayed on. He died at Brazil in 1828.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
