Orélie-Antoine de Tounens (1825-1878), a young lawyer from Périgord, born in Chourgnac, Dordogne, arrived in Chile in 1858 in the hope of founding the kingdom of Patagonia. The following year, he traveled to Araucania where, without any weapons, money or knowledge of the local language, he managed to be proclaimed king of Araucanians and Patagonians on November 17, 1860. His…
« writing to recover painting» Art historian, essayist, writer. Born in Suresnes, West of Paris. Attracted very young by painting, literature with Paul Féval’s narratives, then by cinema after seeing Jean Cocteau’s Orphée… All her pocket money goes into art books, canvases and paint tubes… « When Christine Sourgins wants to enter the Beaux Arts school in 1980, she gives…
Why do you support the project “Patagonian collectors”? Patagonian collectors like works of art, they do not keep them locked up in a safe or a “port franc”, they live with them… They enjoy visiting the artists in their studios and talk shop with them : they ask me to tell the story of ten painters, a printmaker and an…
Jean Raspail Jean Raspail explored Patagonia in the 1950’s and wrote “Le Jeu du Roi” (“the King’s Game”) where he imagines a successor to Orélie-Antoine de Tounens. In 1981, he published the novel « Moi, Antoine de Tounens, roi de Patagonie » (I, Antoine de Tounens, king of Patagonia”). His readers got involved in this game, sending in so much…
In 2009, Christine Sourgins, wrote to the Consul General to apply for oneiric asylum. Dear Sir, Before I submit to you my request, I feel I have to expose a few facts which may give some background. At age six, I reached up for altitude, setting up in the attic a sackcloth bivouac to sleep on the slate rooftop under…
Mister Chancellor, The Consul General made me the honor of granting me oneiric asylum, and encourages me to apply for the Patagonian nationality, so that I am hereby applying for this favor. Of course, I wish to work for the fame and glory of His Majesty. However, as a historian of art and admirer of Baudelaire, I have been nurturing…
Rubens, river of forgetting, garden of idleness, Pillow of the fresh flesh where one cannot love it, But where life flows and churns without end Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea. Leonardo da Vinci, profound and somber mirror Where charming angels, with sweet smiles All charged with mysteries, appear in the shadow Of the…
The Patagonian Collectors want be anonymous. Patagonia is honoured with a native race of nonesuch collectors: Maurice Rheims paid homage to them in his book “Les Collectionneurs” (“Collectors”) (Ramsay, 2002, p.39). « In the Argentinian pampa and the plains of Patagonia, there are many colonies of rodents recalling rabbits and groundhogs, who dig burrows that can extend across several square…
The Kingdom founded by Orélie I has several aims : in addition to the literary tradition, the princely title was transmitted by designation and one of the last pretenders, was involved in the defense of the Mapuche natives of Chile as they face the greed of large textile companies which occupy their land ; farther north, other natives resist the…
