Heirisson’s 1801 Swan River map sells for £160,000 as part of the £1.57m Freycinet Collection

Sold by order of the liquidators of Southern Equities Corporation, in association with Nevill Keating Pictures, this archive comprised much of the original artwork produced on Freycinet’s world voyage of 1817-20, along with engravers’ drawings, working copies of proof engravings and the official printed accounts and atlases published from 1825.

The collection had descended in Freycinet’s family until the 1960s, when it began to be dispersed, but this collection, which has retrieved some of the disposals and added some of the printed accounts, amounted to more than half of the original group of some 500 drawings brought back by Freycinet on the Uranie.

It had also been supplemented by a collection of ten previously unknown and unpublished manuscript charts of Western Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania from Baudin’s voyage of 1800-04. Freycinet had served on that voyage and later edited Peron’s official account for
publication, and these too were once in his possession.

Illustrated right is a chart of the Swan River drawn by François Antoine Boniface Heirisson of the Naturaliste from direct observation after a 55-mile longboat journey along the river accomplished in June 1801 on the Baudin expedition.

Two other such charts, a rough sketch and “a final draft showing the river and its branches,” are held in the Archives Nationale in Paris, but this far more accomplished version, showing soundings and with
references to features such as shallows, rocks, etc. – and showing the site of the future city of Perth – would appear to be an intermediate stage between the open boat sketches and the version prepared for publication in the atlas to Baudin’s voyage. A hugely important Australian map, it sold at £160,000.