Giclee reprint of an original lithograph from Jules Sebastian Cesar Dumont D'Urville’s, Voyage au pole sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée. This multi-volume scientific chronicle published by Gide in Paris between 1841 and 1854 documents one of France's final historic maritime expeditions. Commissioned by King Louis-Philippe and spanning from 1837 to 1840, the voyage challenged British and American polar dominance by successfully charting the Antarctic mainland, which Dumont d’Urville famously named Adélie Land after his wife. Beyond its geographical triumphs, the mission served as an immense victory for natural history, deploying a specialized team of scientists and artists who gathered thousands of unfamiliar specimens across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. These biological findings were systematically compiled into extensive text volumes and a stunning Mammifères atlas starting in 1841, providing 19th-century Europe with its first highly authoritative, anatomically precise illustrations of remote global wildlife.

Designed by natural history master Jean-Charles Werner, managed by technical director Borromée, and engraved onto a steel plate by Mme. Égasse, the large central subject is a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), cataloged under its early French common name "Rorqual noueux" (Knobby Rorqual) to highlight the distinct dermal tubercles along its snout and lower jaw. Surrounding this adult specimen is a groundbreaking embryological sequence labeled as figures 2 through 7, which provides a highly detailed look at a dolphin fetus and its internal anatomy.