

Bringen Sie Ihre Auktion zu Sammlern weltweit!
Jetzt eintragen lassen
Bringen Sie Ihre Auktion zu Sammlern weltweit!
Jetzt eintragen lassen
Alle Auktionen / Kunst und Drucke / Freminville Original Watercolor of a fish, the razor surgeonfish


De FREMINVILLE, Christophe Paulin de la Poix (French, 1787-1848). 55. Nasam Desarme naseus dearmateaus 1/2 de la grandeur naturelle Voyage de la Venus Isles Gallapagos. [Scombroid fish 1/2 of the natural size Voyage of the Venus Galapagos Islands]. Species is actually Prionurus laticlavius, the razor surgeonfish or yellowtail surgeonfish. Watercolor, graphite, and ink on paper. Inscribed ‘Nasam Desarme/ naseus dearmateaus 12/ 1/2 de la grandeur naturelle’ at center, ‘Voyage de la Venus’ lower left and ‘Isles Gallapagos’ lower right. Numbered ‘55’ in the upper right corner. Ca. 1839 to 1847. 9" x 11 1/4" sheet. Valenciennes described the species as Naseus laticlavius in 1846, in the very same Vénus atlas, from Galápagos material. It was only the third species recognized in the genus Prionurus, from the Greek for “saw” and “tail,” referring to the row of sharp keeled bony plates on the rear of the body. Fréminville wrote “Naseus dearmatus n.,” where the “n.” stands for nobis, “by us,” the old convention for proposing a new species. He was calling it the “disarmed” unicornfish, since it lacks the erectile scalpel blade of a true Naso. Valenciennes, working on the same material in Paris, chose laticlavius instead, after the latus clavus, the broad purple stripe on a Roman senator’s toga, for that heavy dark shoulder bar. Because Valenciennes published, Fréminville’s name never entered the literature and survives only on sheets like this one. As a living animal, Prionurus laticlavius, the razor surgeonfish or yellowtail surgeonfish, is one of the signature sights of Galápagos rocky reefs, ranging from the Gulf of California to Peru. Two watercolors of fish from the Voyage of the Venus, at the intersection of French naval science and early Galápagos natural history. Ichthyology images from the Voyage de Venus mission to the Galápagos are significant because they are among the very earliest scientific samplings of Galápagos reef fishes, essentially contemporaneous with Darwin’s. The frigate Vénus left Brest, France, in late 1836 under the command of Abel Aubert Dupetit-Thouars and returned in June 1839. On board were the hydrographer Urbain Dortet de Tessan, the doctor-naturalist Adolphe Simon Neboux, and the surgeon Charles René Augustin Léclancher. Despite what we know of the voyage today, their mission was not scientific; it was commercial. The voyage aimed to protect and expand French whaling in the Pacific and gather intelligence on commercial opportunities in Russian Kamchatka, Mexico, and California. The Venus reached the Galápagos from Payta in June 1838 and stayed about three weeks. Dupetit-Thouars visited Floreana on June 22, 1838, and Nicholas Lawson took him to the struggling penal colony there; Lawson had told Darwin three years earlier that he could identify which island a tortoise came from by its shell. The Vénus sailed for the Marquesas on July 15.[1] While the Beagle had been in the archipelago in late 1835, Leonard Jenyns’s account of Darwin’s fishes did not appear until 1840 to 1842. Then, in 1846, Achille Valenciennes published the ichthyology in the expedition’s Atlas de Zoologie (Zoological Atlas).[2] Fréminville was not on the Vénus. He sailed from 1818 to 1827 on the Rhône, the Néréide, the Bonite, and the Adour, in the Baltic, off West Africa, and to both Americas, repeatedly and unsuccessfully petitioning for command of a voyage of discovery around the world. He then retired to Brest and devoted himself entirely to natural history and archaeology until his death there on January 12, 1848. These drawings are almost certainly studio work, made in Brest from specimens, notes, or field sketches that came home with the Vénus. This fits a broader pattern in his surviving corpus, which includes sheets labeled for expeditions he never joined, including d’Entrecasteaux’s voyage, the Héroïne, and Vanikoro. His watercolors are best understood as a private, unpublished visual encyclopedia assembled by an ambitious naturalist working from mission field notes or base sketches. Fréminville was simultaneously a naval officer, Celtomane, Freemason, romantic, and pioneering archaeologist of Lower Brittany.
Schätzpreis:€3,513.6
Zur AuktionAlle Objekte ansehen vonArader GalleriesoderKunst und Drucke
Schätzpreis:
€3,513.6
ROLAND SVENSSON. Waxholm, färglitografi, signerad, numrerad 121/360.
09/28/2026
€176.47
Schätzw.: €265.55



Bringen Sie Ihre Auktion zu Sammlern weltweit!
Jetzt eintragen lassen

ENDEL KÖKS. "Meril" (Till sjöss) / Båtflyktingar, linoleumsnitt.
09/28/2026
€447.26
Schätzw.: €442.32
OIDENTIFIERAD KONSTNÄR. Stadsmotiv, Frankrike, akvarell, signerad
09/28/2026
€300.62
Schätzw.: €221.29
VILHELM NYROOS. "Taxi in Egypt", akryl på duk, applikation med doftgran
09/28/2026
€30.88
Schätzw.: €132.77