AUDOUIN-DUBREUIL Louis (EN)

Biographical Article

Louis Audouin-Dubreuil was born on August 2, 1887 in Saint-Jean-d'Angély (Charente-Maritime) into a family of the local bourgeoisie that produced cognac (Maison Audouin Frères, founded in 1788). His mother, Marie de Reboul (1865-1956), was a painter and pupil of Furcy de Lavault (1847-1915). His uncle, Baude de Maurceley (1852-1930), a teacher in Algeria and novelist of the Sahara, was not a stranger to his desire to discover other horizons, nor was local explorer René Caillié (1799-1838), the first Westerner to return from the city of Timbuktu (now Mali).

At the age of 18, Louis Audouin-Dubreuil left for England to study business and language, with the aim of developing the business run by his father and uncle in the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries. In October 1910, after his military service, he joined the board of directors of the family business. It proved to only be  a brief interlude before the war since he was mobilised on August 2, 1914.

Louis Audouin-Dubreuil joined his platoon, the 10th regiment of Hussars, at Tarbes. With his cavalry division, he fought on the fronts of the Marne and Artois in the fall of 1914, at the Four de Paris in the Argonne, in the Bois de Malancourt west of Verdun, and then on the Yser in 1915-1916. Between September 1916 and January 1917, he joined the military aviation and learned to pilot airplanes. As a licensed aviator pilot, he reached the south of Tunisia. He was assigned to the border with Italian Libya, where he participated in the creation of the Zarzis camp and developed the Section of Machine Gun Tractors of the Tunisian Air Force (la Section des Tracteurs Mitrailleurs de l’Aviation Tunisienne). Because there were no roads, these tractors had to be created.Thus,  the all-terrain vehicle was born.

At the end of the Great War, in 1919, he was the head of the Saoura-Tidikelt mission commanded by General Nivelle (1856-1924). He was responsible for prospecting for the establishment of a railway line and an overhead line across the Sahara. In 1920, his experience in the desert and his spirit of adventure made him an ideal collaborator for André Citroën (1878-1935), who was preparing his first automobile rally in North Africa: the first crossing of the Sahara in half-track automobiles (La Traversée du Sahara en autochenilles, 1922-1923). There followed the Citroën Center-Africa Expeditions linking Algeria to the island of Madagascar (1924-1925) and Center-Asia linking Lebanon to China then Indochina (1931-1932), of which he was second in command.

After the second part of his life, which he devoted to writing and sharing his memoirs of war and exploration, Louis Audouin-Dubreuil died in Zarzis on February 12, 1960.

The Collection

Mr. Mayor,

Isolating a collection of potential interest to the public so that only a few relatives and countryside neighbours may benefit is in our time no longer anything but an archaic and selfish custom.

I would therefore be happy to offer my hometown a collection of African objects and the half-track vehicle with which I made the first crossing of the Sahara from Algeria to Niger and Timbuktu.

The Government of the Republic has placed the other collections and the three other cars from our expedition in the Musée des Invalides and in the Museums of the City of Paris. The collection that I present to you is reduced in scale but has a real […] artistic and even historical value, because Africa will transform itself increasingly each day in its triumphal march towards justice, well-being, and progress as it loses its primitive and wild racial habits. I would add to this collection plans, maps, photographic enlargements, drawings and paintings representing curious scenes and instructions on the Sahara and Central Africa […].

Signed: Louis Audouin-Dubreuil

With this letter, presented at a meeting of the municipal council of the city of Saint-Jean-d'Angély on October 2, 1936,  Louis Audouin-Dubreuil announced his desire to entrust his native town with part of his collection from of his African expeditions under the aegis of André Citroën. His works were incorporated into the museum's collections between 1936 and 1947. The Louis-Audouin-Dubreuil Collection (lots 1936.2 and 1947.0) includes more than 250 mainly African iconographic objects and documents, including the Croissant d'Argent half-track with which he made the first crossing of the Sahara (1922-1923). The heart of this collection consists of swords, sandals, Tuareg bags and cushions, engraved calabashes from Chad, a mortar, knives, spears, bows and arrows, buttockcloth, Mangbetu statuettes and masks from the Belgian Congo, ostrich eggs from Sudan mounted on leather strips, the album Dessins et Peintures d’Afrique exécutés au cours de l’Expédition Citroën Centre-Afrique by Alexandre Iacovleff comprising 40 lithographs, edited by Lucien Vogel at Jules Meynial on May 1, 1927, some fifty photographs representing landscapes and native people from Algeria to Madagascar, geographical maps, Citroën rally ephemera, a diorama depicting scenes from the Expédition Citroën Centre-Afrique and contemporary works published in various languages ​​(cf. bibliographical references).

Thanks to donations and deposits from Ariane Audouin-Dubreuil, daughter of Louis Audouin-Dubreuil (MCSJA, lots 2014.3, 2015.3, D.1998.1 and D.2006.1), the institution also preserved a saddle of the Tuareg Ouelleminden from Niger, blankets from Niger, harpoons from Chad, spears from Haut-Uele, paddles and a Mangbetu mortar from the Belgian Congo, Persian silks and graphic documents from his personal collection: a lithograph with the effigy of Louis Audouin-Dubreuil made by Alexandre Iacovleff in 1932, the posters for the films La Croisière noire and La Croisière jaune, and a panel of photographs from the Expédition Citroën Centre-Afrique, as well as his photographs taken during the Expédition Citroën Centre-Asie  (1931-1932) in digitised form.

During the auction "Les missions Citroën, Collection Louis Audouin-Dubreuil" organized by Aguttes on Monday, October 18, 2010 at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, the city of Saint-Jean-d'Angély purchased 46 photographs showing the rooms of the October-December 1926 exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre in Paris (MCSJA, 2011.1.12 to 63), two Mangbetu harps (MCSJA, 2011.1.1 and 2011.1 .2), 3 reels of the film La Croisière noire directed by Léon Poirier (MCSJA, 2011.1.3 to 2011.1.5) and a copy of the Journal de Pekin dated February 13, 1932 that announced the arrival  of the Citroën Central Asian mission in Beijing (MCSJA, 2011.1.64).