A PAIR OF VIEWS OF TONGA-TABOU, POLYNESIA
with blind stamp
hand coloured lithographs, c.1830-1835, published by Antoine-Joseph Langlumé, from Voyage de la Corvette L'Astrolabe
each 30.7 x 40.9cm
each 54.2 x 64.3cm (framed)
(2)

Property from a London Collection

The Astrolabe was named after the eponymous expeditionary vessel that had been wrecked off the Solomon Islands in the spring of 1788 under the command of Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse (1741-c.1788). First christened Coquille, under which name it sailed from France in 1822 to circumnavigate the globe under the command of Louis-Isidore Duperrey (1786-1865), it was captained by Dumont d'Urville and sailed in 1826 to visit New Zealand and the Pacific Islands on a fact finding mission, including to discover the true fate of Lapérouse's earlier voyage.

The expedition stopped at the Cape of Good Hope, passed through Bass Strait visiting Port Phillip, and arriving at Sydney on 1 December 1828. Sailing on to New Zealand in January 1827 it arrived in Tonga in the spring and explored the Fiji Archipelago, New Britain and New Guinea. In November, after a stop at Amboina, it sailed up the north-west coast of Australia, reaching Tasmania. Returning via the Cape of Good Hope it docked in Marseille on 25 March 1829. The Astrolabe subsequently embarked on a further voyage, this time to the South Pole, in 1837. The story and findings of the 1826-29 expedition of the Astrolabe were published in eighteen volumes under the authorship of Dumont d'Urville as Voyage de la Corvette L'Astrolabe in the early 1830s.