A striking plate depicting native women engaged in various domestic chores in the town of Agana on the island of Guam, from Freycinet's important publication "Voyage autour du monde."

Louis Claude Desaulces de Freycinet (1779-1842) was a French marine officer and explorer, who participated in several significant early 19th-century expeditions to relatively unknown areas in the southern hemisphere. In 1800, he joined one of the most important early explorations of Australia, which was commissioned by the French government and commanded by Nicholas Baudin (1754-1803). On this voyage, which included stops in Mauritius and Tasmania, Freycinet served as a surveyor and was responsible for conducting a thorough cartographic survey of the Australian coast. Upon returning to France years later, he completed a detailed account of the journey begun by the naturalist Françis Péron that was published as Voyage de decouvertes aux Terres Australes between 1807 and 1816.

In 1817, Freycinet embarked on the Uranie on a major scientific expedition around the world to record information regarding the geography, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, ethnology, and indigenous flora and fauna of various locations in the southern hemisphere. Accompanied by the talented artist Jacques Arago, he explored the Sandwich Islands, the Hawaii Islands as well as Rio de Janeiro, the Cape of Good Hope, Tonga, Gibraltar, Tenerife, Mauritius, Timor, Tierra del Fuego, Montevideo, Mauritius, New South Wales, and the Caroline Islands. After being shipwrecked near the Falklands, Freycinet eventually returned to Paris on the Physicienne in 1820, where he published a comprehensive illustrated account of the expedition in a colossal thirteen-volume work entitled Voyage Autor de Monde.