Artwork Information

The ethnographic portrait plates in the Atlas are representative of the various places the Astrolabe stopped as it journeyed from the South Island up the North Island. Depicted are people from Tasman Bay, Whangarei, the Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga. Some of the subjects are named, while others remain anonymous. Particular attention is paid to adornments, hairstyle and facial and body moko. Other plates were made which detailed clothing. De Sainson recorded the difficulty he had in making his drawings "I also tried to sketch one or two portraits, but the continual movements of my models made it rather difficult for me to finish them. What I was doing caused a lot of laughter; every minute they tried to escape me, but I put them back into position immediately. They did not seem to lend themselves at all willingly to such work, which demanded that they should be still for a few minutes and I suppose that the words they addressed to me in their impatience would have had somewhat peculiar equivalents in French." (Collins, 1997, p.8).