Antoine Fauchery

Antoine Fauchery
Fauchery c. 1858
Born	15 November 1823 (1823) Paris, France
Died	April 1861 (aged 37–38) Yokohama, Japan
Occupation(s)	Adventurer, writer, photographer
Parent(s)	Julien Fauchery Sophie Gilberte Soré

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. 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. Fauchery's initial interests were in architecture, painting and engraving.

Writing and adventuring

Due to a fortunate meeting in café in 1844 with the poet Théodore de Banville, Fauchery began to develop as a writer. He became part of the Bohemian circle that included writers Henri Murger, Champfleury, Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval and Théodore Barrière and contributed articles to the journal, Le Corsaire-Satan, along with the rest of that circle. He made portraits of Francoise Guizot, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Janin, Théophile Gautier, Gioachino Rossini, Eugène Scribe, Émile Augier, and Thomas Philippon, François Certain de Canrobert, and the Polish patriot Adam Czartoryski, several of whom were also portrayed by Fauchery's friend, photographer Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), with whom in 1848 he journeyed with a group of idealistic French and Polish émigrés who were intent on liberating Poland from Russia. However, Fauchery and Nadar didn't have enough money to support them and went back to France a couple of months after they set out.

Fauchery, according to French poet and dramatist De Banville, was immortalised in Henri Murger's novel Scènes de la vie de Bohème in the character of the painter Marcel. 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.

In Australia and return to Europe

In July 1852 Fauchery set out from London by ship for Australia with Louise, probably Louise Joséphine Gatineau (whom he later married in 1857), and he spent the better part of the next four years in Australia. Once in Melbourne, he was apparently inspired to go to the goldfields by a Catholic Priest, a fellow Frenchman. 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. 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, he kept a provisions store at the Jim Crow gold diggings (Daylesford).

Fauchery returned to UK/Europe in 1856, but missed the staging of a play he wrote with Théodore Barrière, Calino, charge d'atelier, which was produced at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris. His letters, written while a gold miner, were serialised in Le Moniteur Universel, then later published in book form in 1857 as Lettres d'un minuer en Australie and provided an account of day-to-day life and the society of the goldfields. De Banville wrote glowingly in its 22-page preface;

"Antoine Fauchery is one of my oldest and best friends. I know little of the dangers of voyaging to Australia, but together we have made many perilous journeys in search of the crock of gold. How many times have we crossed the Parisian ocean in storm and shadow, our frail barque Hope buffeted by the winds of Chance. How many times, in days of yore, have we had to sell our belongings [ . . . . ] I knew him first as a very young man, slim and strong with sparkling eyes, and fine head of untidy curly hair, straight arched nose, ironic and sensual mouth, a prominent chin, and a powerful neck like a young Hercules. He belongs to a long line of Chevaliers who went in search of the Grail [ . . . ] Fauchery studied painting and architecture, was a wood-engraver, and finally a man of letters. "In 1848 Fauchery joined forces with a band of French patriots and Polish refugees setting out for the defence of Poland. At the last moment the Government stopped them. Then Fauchery set out with a small band to do it himself. One of his most devoted followers in this exploit was Nadar. Both Fauchery and Nadar were taken prisoners at Magdeburg, but eventually escaped with Polish passports as Nadarski and Faucheriski. Returning to Paris, Fauchery wrote articles on their adventures, and also of the beauty of the German countryside. In 1852 Fauchery left for Australia, but he carried France with him. In his writings we find wit, strength, and courage, and the quality of modesty I esteem in him most of all. Fauchery returned to France in 1856. Then, at the request of The Society of Men of Letters, the Minister has given him commission to study and reproduce by pen and photograph the interesting features of Australia, China and the Indies."

Return to Australia

Fauchery returned from London to Port Phillip, Australia, by the ship Sydenham with companion Julie in late 1857. 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 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. 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.

Sun pictures of Victoria

Group of diggers, Castlemaine, from Fauchery and Daintree, Sun pictures of Victoria

The album Sun pictures of Victoria 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. The Argus advertised in 1858 the publication in ten installments 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."

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 Petval 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."

Final travels and death

In February of 1859, disillusioned with that city, he left Melbourne and went to Manila. It is believed that the French government then paid him to go to China as a photographer and journalist or war correspondent. 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). 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.

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

Images courtesy of [1], State Library Victoria

References

• Anglo-American Name Authority File, s.v. "Fauchery, Antoine", LC Control Number n 84178594. Accessed 5 October 2006.
• O'Neill, K. M. "Fauchery, Antoine Julien (1827? - 1861)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, online edition; print edition: volume 4 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972), pp 158–159. Accessed 5 October 2006.
• Thiriez, Régine. Barbarian Lens: Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998).
• Charles Monselet, La lorgnette littéraire: dictionnaire des grands et des petits auteurs de mon temps, p 90 (Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857)] (in French).

External links

• Sun Pictures of Victoria at State Library Victoria.