Nicolas-Martin Petit b. 1777

  • Artist (Draughtsman),
  • Artist (Painter)
Petit was the artist for a French voyage to Australia, whose job, according to the eminent scientist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, was to record 'all that which may be of interest for the history of Man.' His depictions of the Aborigines have an immediacy and directness unlike any previous images of them.

Citations

  • Marchant, L. & Reynolds, J. (1966), 'Thomas Nicholas Baudin and Louis-Claude de Freycinet’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, ed. Pike, D., Shaw, A., Clark, M., Nairn, B., Serle, G. and Ward, R. vol 1, Melbourne.

  • Bonnemains, J., Forsyth, E. & Smith, B. (1988), 'Baudin in Australian Waters’, Melbourne.

  • Hamy, E. (1891), 'L’oeuvre ethnographique de Nicolas-Martin Petit’, L’Anthropologie, vol. 2.

  • Horner, F. (1987), 'The French Reconnaissance’, Melbourne.

  • Mander-Jones, P. (1964), 'The artists who sailed with Baudin and Flinders’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (South Australia), vol. 65.

  • Plomley, N. (1983), 'The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines’, Hobart.

  • (1807), 'Voyage des Découvertes aux Terres Australes’, Paris, p16.

Initial data sources

  • The Dictionary of Australian Artists: painters, sketchers, photographers and engravers to 1870