NÆRBILLEDER AF DET EKSOTISKE: Etnografiske illustrationer af Påskeøen fra anden halvdel af 1700-tallet

Resumé

This article discusses the theoretical and pragmatic dialogue between the instructions

given to the artists who participated in European scientific expeditions and the

production of ethnographic illustrations. The discrepancy between methodological

criteria and the empirical portrayal of exotic Others indicates an important dilemma:

that the European representations of alien cultures were deeply rooted in European

aesthetic idiosyncrasies and ideals of primitiveness. The French artist Gaspard Duché

de Vancy (ca. 1750-1788) who travelled on François Galaup de Lapérouse’s scientific

expedition (1785-1788) portrayed the society of Easter Island not according to what he

actually observed, but rather to the captain’s distrustful judgement of the natives of

Easter Island. In an effort to solidify a rather biased portrayal of the natives, the artist

incorporated specific ethnographic devices, including exotic attire, weaponry and the

gigantic monoliths, endeavouring to give his illustrations a more ethnographic and

thus realistic outlook. Furthermore, this article discusses an illustration of Easter Island

that the German traveller Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798) made, and which he

included in his own German translation of Lapérouse’s travels. A study of Forster’s

illustration indicates that the author generously borrowed crucial elements from Duché

de Vancy’s original painting, and from two other paintings, made by the British painter

William Hodges. By uncovering how expedition artists incorporated aesthetic

idiosyncrasies into their compositions, this article uncovers how ethnographic

illustrations were manipulated according to an exotic decor, where the alien reality

was at first patch-worked and as a result constructed.