Adèle de Dombasle

Gabrielle Adélaide Garreau (called Adèle Mathieu de Dombasle), known as Adèle de Dombasle, was a French traveller and illustrator, who worked in the French Pacific territories during the 19th century. Her illustrations are detailed and show notable indigenous figures such as Pomare IV and King Temoana of Nuku Hiva. On her return to France she published an account of her experiences. She has been compared to figures such as Rose de Freycinet, Jeanne Leenhardt and Margaret Stokes, who were other early explorers and pioneers of women's archaeology in the Pacific.

Biography

Born in 1819 in Nancy, she came from an aristocratic family. She travelled to the Pacific in 1847 accompanying Edmond Ginoux de la Coche, who had been sent on a mission by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ginoux was tasked in part with building expanding ethnographic collections relating to the indigenous peoples he was to encounter; part of this collecting programme was the creation of illustrations, undertaken by de Dombasle. Their expedition was cut short: they spent one week in the Marquesas Islands and one week in Tahiti, before Ginoux was asked to leave by the Governor of the latter. By 1851, de Dombasle had returned to France.The illustrations made by de Dombasle are intricately detailed and depict important indigenous figures, such as Queen Pomaré IV, as well as landscapes, objects and the natural world. Her botanical illustrations are so specific that they can be used for identification.