Antoine Julien Nicolas Fauchery (15 November 1823 – 1861) was a French adventurer, writer and
photographer with republican sympathies. He participated in the national uprising in Poland in 1848 (
Greater Poland Uprising), opened a
photographic studio in
Melbourne,
Australia, in 1858, and was commissioned to accompany the French forces as they progressed to Beijing during the last stage of the
Second Opium War in 1860. He wrote thirteen long dispatches from the front-line for le Moniteur, the official French government newspaper. He died in
Yokohama of dysentery.
Early life and interests
Antoine Fauchery was born in
Paris,
France, the son of Julien Fauchery, a merchant, and his wife Sophie Gilberte Soré (other sources have 'Soret').[1] His parents, who married in 1818, are recorded as having a baby girl, Barbe Julie Sophie, in 1820, three years before Antoine's birth on 15 November 1823.[2] Fauchery's initial interests were in architecture, painting and engraving.[3]
Fauchery, according to
De Banville, was immortalised in
Henri Murger's novel
Scènes de la vie de Bohème in the character of the painter Marcel.[3][5] That portrayal was later to inspire French artist
Mirka Mora to migrate to
Melbourne.[6] Between 1848 and 1852, Fauchery produced a number of pamphlets, serials and short plays, which were published in journals such as Le Corsaire, Journal pour Rire, Dix Décembre and L'Evénement.[3]
In Australia and return to Europe
In July 1852 Fauchery sailed from
Gravesend on the Emily for Australia with Louise, probably Louise Joséphine Gatineau (whom he later married in
Montmartre on 15 January 1857),[1] and he spent the better part of the next four years in Australia.[1] Once in Melbourne, he was apparently inspired to go to the goldfields by a Catholic Priest, a fellow Frenchman.[3] Fauchery went to the Ballarat Goldfields, a major destination during the
Victorian Gold Rush, where he spent two years digging for gold but had little success himself, although witnessing some successful gold discoveries by others.[7] On his return to Melbourne, he established Café Estaminet Français at 76 Little Bourke Street in
Melbourne to serve Europeans in the colony, who could meet and play billiards there. Later in an unsuccessful venture,[1] he kept a provisions store at the
Jim Crow gold diggings (Daylesford).[2]
Fauchery returned to UK/Europe in 1856 on the Roxburg Castle, but missed the successful staging of a play he wrote with
Théodore Barrière, Calino, charge d'atelier,[8] at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris.[2] That year La Résurrection de Lazare, a 'drama in letter form' written in collaboration with Henri Murger was published in Paris. His letters, written while a gold miner, were serialised in Le Moniteur Universel, then later published by newly-established
Auguste Poulet-Malassis in book form in 1857 as Lettres d'un minuer en Australie[9][10][11] and provided an account of day-to-day life and the society of the goldfields.[1]
Return to Australia
Granted 500 Francs by the French government to record Australia, India and China in photographs, Fauchery returned from London to
Port Phillip, Australia, by the ship Sydenham with a companion who called herself Julie in late 1857.[3] It was reported in January 1858 that he had brought various examples of photographic portraits of famous people with him on his return to Melbourne[4] and he set up a commercial photography studio at 132 Collins Street, Melbourne. In February of the same year, he won a gold medal for 'various portraits on paper, from collodion negatives' at an exhibition held by the Victorian Industrial Society.[12] As a working photographer, in November 1858 he photographed the Melbourne division of the Volunteer Artillery Regiment and the A and B troops of the mounted force as they went about their artillery practice and manoeuvres in the parkland adjoining the Princes Bridge barracks.[13]
Sun pictures of Victoria
Group of diggers, Castlemaine, from Fauchery and Daintree, Sun pictures of Victoria
The album Sun pictures of Victoria[14] comprised photographic prints of Melbourne, the Victorian goldfields and Aboriginal Australians that Fauchery made with photographer
Richard Daintree that are among the only existing images of the goldfields and Australian Aboriginal Peoples from this time.[7][15]The Argus advertised in 1858 the publication in ten instalments under this title to a total of;
"50 large photographs, in illustration of our colonial celebrities, our landscape and marine scenery, and our private and public architecture. The invention of the stereomonoscope, by means of which the objects exhibited in a sun picture, of any size, assume solidity and relief to the eye of the spectator, gives an additional value to photographic transcripts of nature."[16]
Jack Cato in his The Story of the Camera in Australia in his inspection of a copy of Sun Pictures sold by a relative of
John Pascoe Fawkner to the
State Library of Victoria, deciphered what was meant by the misleading term 'stereomonoscope;' these were not
stereograms but "proved to be taken with a
Petvzal lens (designed by Viennese scientist) which gave sharp focus to the subject and a diffused focus to the background from which the subject appeared to stand forward, in relief. This lens had been used only for groups and simple figures. [Fauchery's] city views were sharp all over."[17]
Final travels and death
In February 1859, disillusioned with that city,[7] He left Australia for
Manila in 1859, and in 1860 the French government granted him a further 1000 Francs to join a military expedition in China as photographer and war correspondent.[1] From July to November 1860 he was in China and sent regular reports back to France. His Lettres de Chine were serialised in
Le Moniteur Universel (October 1860-February 1861).[18] Fauchery became ill while in China and died in
Yokohama, Japan, probably of gastritis and dysentery, on 27 April 1861. He was buried in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery.[2]
Selected bibliography
Fiction
Amours d'un Petit Bossu et d'une Magdeleine en Bois
Une Histoire de l'ami Jacques
Conte de Jour de l'an
Plays
Fauchery, A. and Barrière, T. Caline, charge d'atelier [play staged 12 March 1856]
Fauchery, A. and Murger, H. La Résurrection de Lazare (Paris: Michael Lévy, 1856)
Published letters
Fauchery, A. Lettres d'un miner en Australie [serialised in Le moniteur universel 9 January-8 February 1857) and published Poulet Malassis et de Broise, Paris, 1857.
Fauchery, A. Lettres d'Chine [serialised in Le moniteur universel 12 October 1860 – 3 February 1861)
Photographs
Fauchery, A. and Daintree, R. Australia (1858) (known as 'the Sun Pictures of Victoria') [photographic views and studies]
Photographs by Fauchery and taken with Richard Daintree
Le Comte Lionel de Chabrillan (1818-1858) consul for France at Melbourne, 1852-1858
Bourke Street looking west from Spring Street, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra below the Falls, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra near Studley Park, Victoria
The Honourable J. O'Shanassy Chief Secretary
References
^
abcdefO'Neill, K. M.,
"Fauchery, Antoine Julien (1827–1861)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 2022-08-17
^Fauchery, Antoine; Daintree, Richard; Reilly, Dianne; Carew, Jennifer; Library Council of Victoria (1982). Sun pictures of Victoria : the Fauchery-Daintree collection. Melbourne: Currey O'Neil : Library Council of Victoria.
ISBN9780859023528.
OCLC223198075.
^Newton, Gael; Ennis, Helen; Long, Chris; Australian National Gallery (1988). Shades of Light : Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery : Collins Australia. pp. 28–30, 42, 46.
Antoine Julien Nicolas Fauchery (15 November 1823 – 1861) was a French adventurer, writer and
photographer with republican sympathies. He participated in the national uprising in Poland in 1848 (
Greater Poland Uprising), opened a
photographic studio in
Melbourne,
Australia, in 1858, and was commissioned to accompany the French forces as they progressed to Beijing during the last stage of the
Second Opium War in 1860. He wrote thirteen long dispatches from the front-line for le Moniteur, the official French government newspaper. He died in
Yokohama of dysentery.
Early life and interests
Antoine Fauchery was born in
Paris,
France, the son of Julien Fauchery, a merchant, and his wife Sophie Gilberte Soré (other sources have 'Soret').[1] His parents, who married in 1818, are recorded as having a baby girl, Barbe Julie Sophie, in 1820, three years before Antoine's birth on 15 November 1823.[2] Fauchery's initial interests were in architecture, painting and engraving.[3]
Fauchery, according to
De Banville, was immortalised in
Henri Murger's novel
Scènes de la vie de Bohème in the character of the painter Marcel.[3][5] That portrayal was later to inspire French artist
Mirka Mora to migrate to
Melbourne.[6] Between 1848 and 1852, Fauchery produced a number of pamphlets, serials and short plays, which were published in journals such as Le Corsaire, Journal pour Rire, Dix Décembre and L'Evénement.[3]
In Australia and return to Europe
In July 1852 Fauchery sailed from
Gravesend on the Emily for Australia with Louise, probably Louise Joséphine Gatineau (whom he later married in
Montmartre on 15 January 1857),[1] and he spent the better part of the next four years in Australia.[1] Once in Melbourne, he was apparently inspired to go to the goldfields by a Catholic Priest, a fellow Frenchman.[3] Fauchery went to the Ballarat Goldfields, a major destination during the
Victorian Gold Rush, where he spent two years digging for gold but had little success himself, although witnessing some successful gold discoveries by others.[7] On his return to Melbourne, he established Café Estaminet Français at 76 Little Bourke Street in
Melbourne to serve Europeans in the colony, who could meet and play billiards there. Later in an unsuccessful venture,[1] he kept a provisions store at the
Jim Crow gold diggings (Daylesford).[2]
Fauchery returned to UK/Europe in 1856 on the Roxburg Castle, but missed the successful staging of a play he wrote with
Théodore Barrière, Calino, charge d'atelier,[8] at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris.[2] That year La Résurrection de Lazare, a 'drama in letter form' written in collaboration with Henri Murger was published in Paris. His letters, written while a gold miner, were serialised in Le Moniteur Universel, then later published by newly-established
Auguste Poulet-Malassis in book form in 1857 as Lettres d'un minuer en Australie[9][10][11] and provided an account of day-to-day life and the society of the goldfields.[1]
Return to Australia
Granted 500 Francs by the French government to record Australia, India and China in photographs, Fauchery returned from London to
Port Phillip, Australia, by the ship Sydenham with a companion who called herself Julie in late 1857.[3] It was reported in January 1858 that he had brought various examples of photographic portraits of famous people with him on his return to Melbourne[4] and he set up a commercial photography studio at 132 Collins Street, Melbourne. In February of the same year, he won a gold medal for 'various portraits on paper, from collodion negatives' at an exhibition held by the Victorian Industrial Society.[12] As a working photographer, in November 1858 he photographed the Melbourne division of the Volunteer Artillery Regiment and the A and B troops of the mounted force as they went about their artillery practice and manoeuvres in the parkland adjoining the Princes Bridge barracks.[13]
Sun pictures of Victoria
Group of diggers, Castlemaine, from Fauchery and Daintree, Sun pictures of Victoria
The album Sun pictures of Victoria[14] comprised photographic prints of Melbourne, the Victorian goldfields and Aboriginal Australians that Fauchery made with photographer
Richard Daintree that are among the only existing images of the goldfields and Australian Aboriginal Peoples from this time.[7][15]The Argus advertised in 1858 the publication in ten instalments under this title to a total of;
"50 large photographs, in illustration of our colonial celebrities, our landscape and marine scenery, and our private and public architecture. The invention of the stereomonoscope, by means of which the objects exhibited in a sun picture, of any size, assume solidity and relief to the eye of the spectator, gives an additional value to photographic transcripts of nature."[16]
Jack Cato in his The Story of the Camera in Australia in his inspection of a copy of Sun Pictures sold by a relative of
John Pascoe Fawkner to the
State Library of Victoria, deciphered what was meant by the misleading term 'stereomonoscope;' these were not
stereograms but "proved to be taken with a
Petvzal lens (designed by Viennese scientist) which gave sharp focus to the subject and a diffused focus to the background from which the subject appeared to stand forward, in relief. This lens had been used only for groups and simple figures. [Fauchery's] city views were sharp all over."[17]
Final travels and death
In February 1859, disillusioned with that city,[7] He left Australia for
Manila in 1859, and in 1860 the French government granted him a further 1000 Francs to join a military expedition in China as photographer and war correspondent.[1] From July to November 1860 he was in China and sent regular reports back to France. His Lettres de Chine were serialised in
Le Moniteur Universel (October 1860-February 1861).[18] Fauchery became ill while in China and died in
Yokohama, Japan, probably of gastritis and dysentery, on 27 April 1861. He was buried in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery.[2]
Selected bibliography
Fiction
Amours d'un Petit Bossu et d'une Magdeleine en Bois
Une Histoire de l'ami Jacques
Conte de Jour de l'an
Plays
Fauchery, A. and Barrière, T. Caline, charge d'atelier [play staged 12 March 1856]
Fauchery, A. and Murger, H. La Résurrection de Lazare (Paris: Michael Lévy, 1856)
Published letters
Fauchery, A. Lettres d'un miner en Australie [serialised in Le moniteur universel 9 January-8 February 1857) and published Poulet Malassis et de Broise, Paris, 1857.
Fauchery, A. Lettres d'Chine [serialised in Le moniteur universel 12 October 1860 – 3 February 1861)
Photographs
Fauchery, A. and Daintree, R. Australia (1858) (known as 'the Sun Pictures of Victoria') [photographic views and studies]
Photographs by Fauchery and taken with Richard Daintree
Le Comte Lionel de Chabrillan (1818-1858) consul for France at Melbourne, 1852-1858
Bourke Street looking west from Spring Street, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra below the Falls, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra near Studley Park, Victoria
The Honourable J. O'Shanassy Chief Secretary
References
^
abcdefO'Neill, K. M.,
"Fauchery, Antoine Julien (1827–1861)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 2022-08-17
^Fauchery, Antoine; Daintree, Richard; Reilly, Dianne; Carew, Jennifer; Library Council of Victoria (1982). Sun pictures of Victoria : the Fauchery-Daintree collection. Melbourne: Currey O'Neil : Library Council of Victoria.
ISBN9780859023528.
OCLC223198075.
^Newton, Gael; Ennis, Helen; Long, Chris; Australian National Gallery (1988). Shades of Light : Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Canberra: Australian National Gallery : Collins Australia. pp. 28–30, 42, 46.
Le Comte Lionel de Chabrillan (1818-1858) consul for France at Melbourne, 1852-1858
Bourke Street looking west from Spring Street, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra below the Falls, Melbourne, Victoria
The Yarra near Studley Park, Victoria
The Honourable J. O'Shanassy Chief Secretary
_consul_for_France_at_Melbourne,_1852-1858.jpg)
