Giclee reprint of an original lithograph from the Zoological Atlas accompanying the reports of the Voyage autour du Monde sur la Corvette de Sa Majeste La Coquille, published in 1825. 

The expedition documented in these volumes is one of the most successful French scientific expeditions of the 19th century. Ordered by King Louis XVIII and commanded by Louis-Isidore Duperrey, this 31-month journey focused purely on scientific discovery, hydrography, and ethnology—primarily across the Pacific Ocean—without losing a single crew member. The expedition returned with an immense amount of data, published between 1825 and 1830 in a multi-volume series, It brought back thousands of plant and animal specimens, including dozens of newly discovered birds, insects, and fish. It also produced highly accurate marine charts and atlases of the Pacific island and documented the languages, tattoos, and social structures of indigenous populations, including Māori and Aboriginal peoples.

One of the specimens returned with the expedition is the Portugese Man o’War (Physalia physalis) depicted in this magnificent print. The Portuguese man o' war was actually one of the major deep-sea invertebrates meticulously studied and documented during that very expedition. The ship's naturalist, René-Primevère Lesson, drew this famous hand-colored engraving of it for the voyage’s scientific atlas, providing early European science with detailed accounts of its ecology, behavior, and the severe symptoms of its sting. It is not a true jellyfish but a siphonophore, which is a colonial organism. It is made of four different types of highly specialized polyps (zooids) that are genetically identical but perform different functions (floating, stinging, digesting, and reproducing). It cannot swim. It relies entirely on the wind and ocean currents to move. The Float is the translucent pink, blue, or purple gas-filled bladder that sits on top of the water. It acts literally as a sail. It was named "man o' war" because it resembled 15th-century Portuguese armed sailing warships. The tentacles average 10 meters (30 feet) but can extend up to 30 meters (100 feet) below the surface.