NEW CALEDONIA. - MENU. Original collage made... - Lot 194 - Giquello

Lot 194
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Estimation :
4000 - 5000 EUR
NEW CALEDONIA. - MENU. Original collage made... - Lot 194 - Giquello
NEW CALEDONIA. - MENU. Original collage made in memory of the banquet held on March 29, 1866, for the officers and sailors of the ship Fulton. [c. 1866]. 59 x 47.5 cm. Transferred to later paper. A very curious original collage, consisting of an assemblage of drawings and pieces of coloured paper. The name of the Fulton is linked to a significant episode in New Caledonia under the administration of Charles Guillain, who was appointed governor of New Caledonia in 1862: the Gatope (Voh) expedition. This expedition was organised following the massacres perpetrated in the region in July and August 1865: first there was the colonist named Taillard, who was murdered by the natives, then the crew of the coaster La Reine-des-Iles who were massacred and eaten by the local tribes, and finally, another act of anthropophagi committed against the sailors of the coaster Le Secret. This was too much. Operations were immediately halted on board the Fulton where the Governor was.... A detachment under the command of Lieutenant Mathieu was led to Kone; after having attacked and destroyed the villages in the centre of the valley, it joined up with the Billès and Guillery columns. On the 9th, the two detachments that remained [...] operated against the Pouanlotches. Their large village, surprised at daybreak, was completely destroyed as well as a large number of others; many natives were killed or wounded; so the memory of an action carried out with great vigor and accomplished with complete success, remained vivid in the minds of the inhabitants of these regions (Legrand, Au pays des Canaques, 1893, p. 136). It was thus on board the Fulton, a steam aviso, that the punitive expedition of Gatope was prepared, and several of its officers played a leading role in the policy of "pacification" of the region. It is also said that it was on board the Fulton that the curious rushed to witness the first lighting of the Amedee Lighthouse on 15 November 1865 - this lighthouse, which still exists, was built in Paris in 1862, dismantled piece by piece, then transported from Le Havre to New Caledonia where it was assembled on an archipelago. In the upper part of the collage is the name, probably autographed, of each of the guests (about forty) who attended the banquet: one finds in particular the names of officers Billès and Mathieu, or that of Leffet (Eugène Leffet, born in Saumur in 1838), a ship's ensign whose name is today associated with a remarkable Canaque sculpture (a tutelary deity) "removed" by him in September 1865 during the Gatope expedition and which was acquired by the New Caledonia Museum in 2012 (cf. E. Kasarhérou, "À propos d'une sculpture remarquable acquise par le musée de Nouvelle-Calédonie" in Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 136-137, 2013). The lower part details the menu served on the occasion: soubise chops, vermicelli soup, braised leg of lamb with tomato sauce, sautéed chicken, duck with olives, truffled turkey, cheese, cakes, fruit (grapes, pineapples and bananas), all washed down with various beverages (rum, claret, Madeira, liqueurs, absinthe, coffee and cognac). In the centre is a bearded sailor smoking a pipe, flanked by views of Gatope and the lighthouse on Amedee Island, with a representation of the Fulton in the two roadsteads. An astonishing and precious document for the history of New Caledonia.
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