Adèle de Dombasle

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. She also has a role in Ginoux's collecting activities, for example a sperm whale tooth now in the Musée des Explorations du monde was presented to de Dombasle by the 'priestess Hina' during a naming ceremony. The pictures are also an important source for archaeologists. One illustration, of a young chief, is similar to one made by René Gillotin.

In 1851 she published an account of her time travelling in the journal La Politique Nouvelle. It shows that she was knowledgeable about the people, places and events that she was encountering, and that prior to the expedition she had spoken to people who had previously travelled there. After Ginoux's death in 1870, de Dombasle inherited his ethnographic collection and appears to have been the person who secured its future, by selling it on to the Museum of the Baron Lycklama (the forerunner of the Museum of World Exploration).