Pacific Matildas: Adèle de Dombasle as a pioneer traveler-artist for archaeological illustration

Written by Emilie Dotte-Sarout
The University of Western Australia

A selection of works by Adèle de Dombasle avalaible from Musée du quai Branly onbline collection http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/explore-collections

“I came to Noukouhiva [1] with the unique aim of seeing.” In 1848, a young French divorcée who had sailed across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, from Bordeaux to the Marquesas Islands through Valparaiso, was calmly explaining to the Naval Officer representing France in these remote ‘possessions’ why she was going to explore a secluded valley of Nuku Hiva, whatever his reticent opinion on the project.

“Do you actually not want to understand, Sir, how much interest I find in seeing the savages truly in their own interiors, in the midst of their customs, surrounded by all the objects they use. I can be told all kinds of long stories about their ways of life, I will only imperfectly learn what I really want to know. The simple inspection of a house will tell me much more. Better than descriptions, it will reveal to me the intimate particularities of their existence. You know it, I came to Noukouhiva with the unique aim of seeing” (De Dombasle 1851: 507).
 
‘Seeing’ was only the first step in fulfilling her aim though. Indeed, Adèle de Dombasle [2] embarked on this voyage as the “illustrator” accompanying amateur ethnologist Edmond Ginoux de La Coche, who had managed to be entrusted with a mission to Oceania and Chilie for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (de la Grandville 2001). Yet, the mission was cut short after just one week in the Marquesas and three weeks in Tahiti, where Ginoux’s outspoken liberal opinions had made him a few powerful enemies. Clearly, the presence of a woman separated from her husband as the ethnologist’s travel companion provided an additional excuse for condemnation. The local government council issued a specific deportation order against Ginoux that stated he was “a dangerous person and had demonstrated since his arrival in Tahiti a conduct contrary to the good order and tranquility of the colony” (the Governor even visited their hotel to make sure that Ginoux and Ms de Dombasle did not share the same bedroom!) (de la Grandville 2001: 374-377).
 
Still, Adèle de Dombasle managed to produce several drawings during her travel in Polynesia (and Chile). These represented monuments and sites from the Marquesas, and Tahitian and Marquesan inhabitants with elements of material culture, landscapes and portraits. The details are exceptional (i.e. plant species are identifiable thanks to the precise representations of the leaves and general forms, motifs of tattoos or artefact decorations are finely depicted) and mean that the limited number of her drawings that have been preserved in public collections are a unique source of information for archaeologists working in the region. Unfortunately, only a handful of her illustrations are known and available today: the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris holds 17 of these, while it appears that some of her drawings are still in private family archives (as illustrated in de la Grandville 2001) and others could have been scattered or misattributed after her return voyage to France.
 
Indeed, according to Ginoux’s biographer, Frédéric de la Grandville, archival sources indicate that the Governor “left Adèle de Dombasle the choice to either stay by herself on the island or accompany Ginoux back”, but they do not record any traces of her decision (2001: 24). Ginoux’s sources describing his long and complicated return trip through the Americas do not mention her, so it appears possible that she took a separate, shorter route (via the Cape Horn and Brazil) back to France. In any case, she was in her home country in 1851, when she published a paper on her experiences in the Marquesas, evoking her delighted discovery of Marquesan landscapes and sites, the context for the tracing of some of her drawings, her attentive encounters with the Marquesan people and their culture as well as her playful and trustful relation with Ginoux. This is a rare document as the only direct source about her experience in Oceania, which clearly shows her curiosity and will to carefully document all her observations, as in this instance when she stops along the track: “I did not want to move away before having augmented my album with a sketch of this picturesque place” (1851: 516).
 
A further passage records another unclear and potentially important aspect of her anthropological contributions: her role in the making of Ginoux de la Coche’s rich collection of Pacific artefacts, hosted today by the Musée de la Castre in Cannes, southern France. Indeed, de Dombasle narrates how, when she was visiting “the great priestess Hina”, both women entered into a haʼa ikoa (exchange of name involving the formal establishment of kinship relationship). The author recounts how this relationship was sealed through the gift she was offered by the high-ranked woman, bringing
“a necklace, a kind of amulet, made up of a small sperm-whale tooth slipped through a braided bark string, which she came to bind around my neck, asking for my name:

---

​'Atéra (Adele)', answered Ginoux 'From now on: you, are Hina; I, am Atéra' ​(1851: 524-525)

This particular pendant was then integrated into Ginoux de la Coche’s collection of “Comparative Ethnography” for which he compiled a descriptive catalogue in 1866 (de la Grandville 2001). The pendant is listed under number 32 as a “sacred necklace” (de la Grandville 2001: 63). Ginoux notes that it was offered by “the great priestess Tahia, wife of Vékétou, high priest of the Teüs tribe, to a Frenchwoman, Mme de Dombasle, whom I had introduced her to” (id.). He then cites an extract of the article published by de Dombasle about the episode.
 
The assimilation of this object offered to Adèle de Dombasle into the ethnographic collection of her male travel companion is striking, especially since a number of pieces of information reveal that she played an essential role in its curation. Notably, she appears to have been the legal heir of the collection after Ginoux’s premature death in 1870, also taking care of his house and library in Nice, eventually making sure that the collection remained intact and properly cared for. A local newspaper article published in 1874 talks about the collection as being “the property of Madam G. de Dombasle” when it was sold to the curator of the Museum of the Baron Lycklama in Cannes, the foundation for the Musée de la Castre (de la Grandville 2001: 387).
 
Clearly, Adèle de Dombasle’s contributions to the early history of Pacific archaeology deserve a detailed analysis and her life needs to be better documented, an aim that the Pacific Matildas team and colleagues are actively pursuing!

References

• de Dombasle, Adèle. 1851. Promenade à Noukouhiva. Visite à la Grande Prêtresse. La Politique Nouvelle, vol. 3.
• de la Grandville, Frédéric. 2001. Edmond de Ginoux. Ethnologue en Polynésie Française dans les années 1840. Paris: l’Harmattan.
• Dotte-Sarout E. In press. Pacific Matildas: finding the women in the history of Pacific archaeology, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, https://www.archaeologybulletin.org/collections/special/histories-of-asia-pacific-archaeologies/
  ​
  

1. Niku-Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands archipelago of French Polynesia.
2. During my research, I have identified “Adèle de Dombasle” as Gabrielle Adélaide Garreau née Mathieu de Dombasle, born 1819-deceased after 1870.