Tableau des Decouvertes du Cap.ne Cook, & de la Pérouse.

Three series of figures of natives with key below, surrounded by narrow pictorial border.
The print is in original state, as issued, never folded into a book and never intended to be. Later versions of the print were lithographed.

Grasset de Saint Sauveur skillfully wove together two dozen individual scenes from various sources such as Webber that present a unique iconic tapestry of the Pacific.
The image presents twenty-four separately identified groups of two, three, or four inhabitants from the different regions and islands of the Pacific Basin, including Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest Coast, Tahiti, New Zealand, South America, the Philippines, etc. This intriguing engraving was borne out of the consuming European need to know and understand the new lands and new peoples of the Pacific explored by Cook, La Pérouse, and their contemporaries.
Grasset de Saint Saveur satisfied that need by creating a virtual microcosm of the Pacific that is at once informative and aesthetically pleasing.
The viewer is invited in to observe twenty-four exquisite miniature scenes offering an intimate glimpse of the exotic people, clothing, material culture, landscapes, pastimes, and familial and social groups of lands newly discovered. The indigenous people are depicted as dignified and graceful. The sinuous pictorial border incorporates flora, fauna, human figures, and artifacts of the Pacific Basin.

Canadian artist, writer, and diplomat Jacques Grasset de Saint Sauveur (1757-1810), developed an abiding interest in primitive people early in his life, leading him to initiate his encyclopedic series of illustrated works of all the people of the world. Born in Montreal at the beginning of the Seven Years' War, he went to live in Franc after the conquest of New Franc by the British. He studied at Sainte-Barbe College in Paris, later embarked upon a diplomatic career, and died in Paris.
Bordeaux engraver Antoine Phelippeaux (1767-1830) specialized in portraits and exhibited at the Salon in 1804 (Bénézit, p. 614).

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