These final two panels from Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique provide a contrasting portrait of two of the most distant and fascinating island cultures encountered by European explorers: Easter Island and the Palau Islands. Rendered with grace and compositional harmony, these scenes offer more than ethnographic detail — they reflect the Enlightenment’s captivation with both the mystery and humanity of Pacific peoples.

 

Panel 19: Easter Island

At the edge of a small bay, a man and woman from Easter Island stand in quiet dignity. The man’s body is adorned with full-body tattoos, and he wears a striking feathered wicker headdress, along with a netted petticoat and a fiber cloak known as a hahou. The woman, more modestly dressed in a green cloth wrap and a banana-leaf mitre, exudes grace, recalling the only young woman Captain Cook’s crew observed navigating a canoe during their 1773 visit.

The scene nods to the island’s volcanic origins and enigmatic past, with references to the colossal stone statues and ruins scattered across the terrain — remnants of a lost civilization that sparked European imagination. Though living in hardship, the islanders were noted for their craftsmanship, gentle demeanor, and linguistic ties to the Tahitians.

Panel 20: Palau (Pelow Islands)

Here, we see King Aba-Thule of Palau and his wife Ludee — figures recorded in the memoirs of Captain Henry Wilson, who was shipwrecked in the archipelago in 1783. The king is portrayed with commanding presence, holding a spear and bearing an iron axe — a gift from a previous shipwrecked crew. Ludee, described as gentle and unassuming, wears the richest dress of her realm, signaling status and local fashion.

This panel memorializes the poignant story of their son Lee Boo, who traveled to London with Captain Wilson in a cross-cultural gesture of learning and goodwill, only to tragically die of smallpox. The tale struck a chord in Enlightenment Europe as a symbol of both human connection and the perils of global contact.

 

Historical and Cultural Context

Panels 19 and 20 reflect the dual fascination with Pacific mystery and nobility:

·       Easter Island stood as a symbol of ancient, vanished grandeur — its statues and sparse population provoking wonder and speculation among European observers.·       Palau, by contrast, offered a hopeful vision of cultural exchange, as told in the popular narrative of Captain Wilson and Lee Boo — a young prince whose graceand tragedy embodied Enlightenment ideals of universality and shared humanity.