14 Facts About Antoine Fauchery

Antoine Julien Nicolas Fauchery was a French adventurer, writer and photographer with republican sympathies.

Antoine Fauchery participated in the national uprising in Poland in 1848, opened a photographic studio in Melbourne, Australia, in 1858, and was commissioned to accompany the French forces as they progressed to Beijing during the last stage of the Second Opium War in 1860.

Antoine Fauchery wrote thirteen long dispatches from the front-line for le Moniteur, the official French government newspaper.

Antoine Fauchery was born in Paris, France, the son of Julien Fauchery, a merchant, and his wife Sophie Gilberte Sore.

Antoine Fauchery became part of the Bohemian circle that included writers Henri Murger, Champfleury, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval and Theodore Barriere and contributed articles to the journal, Le Corsaire-Satan, along with the rest of that circle.

Antoine Fauchery made portraits of Francoise Guizot, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Janin, Theophile Gautier, Gioachino Rossini, Eugene Scribe, Emile Augier, and Thomas Philippon, Francois Certain de Canrobert, and the Polish patriot Adam Czartoryski, several of whom were portrayed by Fauchery's friend, photographer Nadar, with whom in 1848 he journeyed with a group of idealistic French and Polish emigres who were intent on liberating Poland from Russia.

Antoine Fauchery, according to De Banville, was immortalised in Henri Murger's novel Scenes de la vie de Boheme in the character of the painter Marcel.

Between 1848 and 1852, Antoine Fauchery produced a number of pamphlets, serials and short plays, which were published in journals such as Le Corsaire, Journal pour Rire, Dix Decembre and L'Evenement.

In July 1852 Antoine Fauchery sailed from Gravesend on the Emily for Australia with Louise, probably Louise Josephine Gatineau, and he spent the better part of the next four years in Australia.

Antoine Fauchery went to the Ballarat Goldfields, a major destination during the Victorian Gold Rush, where he spent two years digging for gold but had little success himself, although witnessing some successful gold discoveries by others.

Antoine Fauchery's letters, written while a gold miner, were serialised in Le Moniteur Universel, then later published by newly-established Auguste Poulet-Malassis in book form in 1857 as and provided an account of day-to-day life and the society of the goldfields.

The album Sun pictures of Victoria comprised photographic prints of Melbourne, the Victorian goldfields and Aboriginal Australians that Antoine Fauchery made with photographer Richard Daintree that are among the only existing images of the goldfields and Australian Aboriginal Peoples from this time.

Antoine Fauchery became ill while in China and died in Yokohama, Japan, probably of gastritis and dysentery, on 27 April 1861.

Antoine Fauchery was buried in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery.