Antoine Chazal

Despite never having visited New Zealand Antoine Chazal is credited as an artist of the engravings that resulted from the 1824 visit of the Coquille to the Bay of Islands. On the ship’s return to France, Chazal used the watercolours and drawings made by the draughtsman on-board Jules Louis Lejeune to prepare highly finished watercolours which were then engraved for the Coquille’s Atlas. Some of these exquisite watercolours are today held by Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. An engraver himself, Chazal was also a painter specialising in botanical subjects, teaching at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.