Tucked away in a museum collection in northern France is an exquisite collection of 19th century sketches of Australian scenes.
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They were made by French artists during Nicolas Baudin's 1800s exploration of Australia, at a time when this country was barely even an idea in the heads of the French.
And soon, for the first time ever, a selection of these images will be displayed in Australia as part of a deal clinched between the Museum of Natural History in Le Havre and six Australian institutions.
In Canberra yesterday to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Museum of Australia, which will host the exhibition in September 2017, Mayor of Le Havre Edouard Philippe said while the collection was not well known in France, it was a "treasury" the people of Le Havre cherished.
"Owning a treasury is good. Sharing a treasury is even better," he said.
"So we decided that we, with six of the most important cultural institutions in Australia, would organise an exhibition that would allow and make possible for people in Australia to discover these treasures."
The drawings will also be shown at the South Australian Maritime Museum in Adelaide, the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, the Western Australian Museum in Perth, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart.
The drawings, by Baudin expedition artists Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit, include watercolours of marine creatures and Australian mammals, images of baskets and watercraft and portraits of indigenous people in NSW and Tasmania.
They were created as part of the most lavishly equipped expedition ever to leave France, the aim of which was to chart Nouvelle Hollande's unfamiliar southern coast.
Lesueur later became the first curator of the museum in Le Havre, which is how the collection of more than 1000 drawings and sketches came to be housed there.
Mr Philippe said the work was much loved in his city.
"The people in Le Havre know the collection and they love to go and see it in the museum, for a very simple reason - you don't know when you see it if it's science or if it's art," he said.
"It is absolutely beautiful and it looks like it is art, but it's also very precise and very interesting and very important from a historical point of view, so it is science."
The planned exhibition, with the working title Napoleon's Artists in Australia, will open in Adelaide in July, 2016 and will tour the country until 2018.
