Charles Alexandre Lesueur was a French naturalist, artist, and explorer. He was a prolific natural history collector, gathering many type specimens in Australia, southeast Asia and North America and was also responsible for describing numerous species, including the spiny softshell turtle, smooth softshell turtle and common map turtle. Both Mount Lesueur and Lesueur National Park in Western Australia are named in his honor. In 1801, he traveled to Australia as artist on the expedition of Nicolas Baudin. With François Péron, he took over the duties as naturalist after the death of the expedition's zoologist René Maugé. Together, they collected over 100,000 zoological specimens. In 1802, he made the only known sketches of the King Island emu in its natural habitat. Between May 1816 and early 1837, he lived and traveled widely in the United States, particularly in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri. In 1833, he visited Vincennes, Indiana, where he sketched the first known drawing of Grouseland, the mansion of William Henry Harrison. The mansion is today a National Historic Landmark. From 1826 to 1837, Lesueur was based in New Harmony, Indiana, where he filled sketchbooks full of the finds discovered during the utopian adventure funded by his friend and former employer, American geologist William Maclure. He arrived in the boat Philanthropist with other intellectuals who came to live in the small town of New Harmony, on the Wabash River. He took research trips and sketched people, small towns and scenes continuously. He was in New Harmony when Prince Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuweid, Germany, and artist Karl Bodmer came to spend five months there in 1832–1833. Prince Maximilian said of Lesueur, "He had explored the country in many directions, was acquainted with everything remarkable, collected and prepared all interesting objects, and had already sent considerable collections to France." Indeed, Lesueur sent specimens of unique fish, animals, and fossils, as well as artifacts he had dug from the Indian Mounds in New Harmony, back to France, where they remain. Lesueur returned to France in 1837, only after his friends Thomas Say and Joseph Barabino had died and William MacClure had returned to Philadelphia, accompanied by many of his fine books. He had spent 21 years in the United States, but continued his scholarly studies and activities in France, where he resumed his occupation of artist-naturalist and began to catalogue his extensive research and artwork. At last, he was awarded the honor of Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal de la Légion d'honneur for his long years of work in the sciences.. In March 1846, Lesueur was appointed curator of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle du Havre. Nine months later, he died suddenly and was buried at Le Havre. In the 1900s, his work was finally published by the Museum, totaling over 60 books, including reports of his zoological, geological, historical and archaeological research, as well as studies of his life. Pictured here is the oilportrait by Charles Willson Peale of Lesueur. The original hangs in the reading room of the Ewell Sale Stewart Library in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Eponyms
One species of frog, two species of lizards, and a species of jellyfish were named in honour of Lesueur :
