Art of Science

At the dawn of the 19th century, French navigator Nicolas Baudin led two lavishly equipped ships on a three-and-a-half-year voyage to the 'Southern Lands'. Inspired by the Enlightenment's hunger for knowledge, Baudin's expedition collected well in excess of 100,000 specimens, produced more than 1500 drawings and published the first complete chart of Australia. Baudin's artists, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit, painted a series of remarkable portraits of Aboriginal people and produced some of the earliest European views of Australian fauna. These exquisite artworks reveal the sense of wonder this strange new world inspired.