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Relation
Voyage
de U
^OlUSklWM’
ou b
?'?ouv. of?' ranee.
j , jhitpar !(■'/ 'C lILI OTat I'dnnd 17<s O.
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Title page from “Relation du Voyage de la Louisianne. ..’’by Marc-Antoine Caillot, between 1731 and 1758 (2005.0011)
from the Mississippi Valley and one of a handful of such documents surviving from all of French North America.
The Diana Helis Henry Fund of The Helis Foundation and the Laussat Society of The Collection made possible the 2010 acquisition of portraits of sugar planter Denis de la Ronde (1726— 1772) and his wife Marie Madeleine Broutin de la Ronde (2009.0231.1,.2).
Marie Madeleine Broutin de la Ronde, ca. 1760(2009.0231.1), acquisition made possible by The Diana Helis Henry Fund of The Helis Foundation and the Laussat Society of The Historic New Orleans Collection
The oil paintings by an unknown artist, probably executed in France about 1760, are rare examples of portraits of Louisianians from the French colonial period. Supplementing these rare works are several recently acquired examples of the colony’s earliest literature. “Vers Francis et latins sur le depan du Reverend Pere Donge pur le Mis-sissipi, par les ecoliers de son quartier”
Title page and detail depicting the acanthus plant from volume two of Institutiones rei herbaria by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, 1719 (2009.0144.2)
(2008.0238) is a collection of French and Latin poems compiled by students of Reverend Father Donge (1670-1705) to commemorate his anticipated departure for the Louisiana colony in 1701. Donge accompanied Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Ibcrville, on his third voyage to Louisiana, where he served as chaplain at Fort Louis de la Louisiane (present-day Mobile) until 1704. A manuscript containing four plays by Etienne Viel, generally recognized as the first native-born playwright of the Mississippi Valley, was acquired in 2010 (2010.0280). In 1743 a seven-year-old Etienne was sent by his father, Alexandre Viel, one of the colony’s first physicians, to Paris to be educated. Prior to this acquisition, only one of the playwright’s dramatic creations, Evandre, was known to exist.
Over the past 30 years, the original collection of General Williams has developed into an extraordinary tool for researchers studying French Louisiana. Boasting materials related to cartography, plant life, immigration, architecture, slavery, the fine arts, economics, and many other subjects, The Collection’s holdings offer a wealth of detail on French Louisiana and its inhabitants.
—Alfred E. Lemmon
8 Volume XXVI11, Number 4 — Fall 2011