Pictorial Album of Cape Town, With Views of Simon's Town, Port Elizabeth, and Graham's Town

Limited Edition No. 671. Condition: Good; Book is actually near fine, however, there is a stain mark along with the front and back cover. No DJ. Very edge wear to boards. Green cloth boards with gilt titles. Interior is clean and without markings. 12 colour plates, reproduced from the original edition of 1866. Includes a commentary at the back of the book. The book is very heavy which may require extra postage. Please inquire of postage rates before ordering. ""First published in 1866, this collection of 12 watercolour landscapes of Cape Town and other towns in the Cape Colony by Thomas William Bowler (1812-1869), one of our best known pictorial historians, has been republished, complemented and enriched by W.R. Thomson's anecdotal but historically accurate text. Bowler came to the Cape from England in 1834 as a servant to Thomas Maclear, the then-new Astronomer Royal of the colony. He later established himself in Cape Town as a self-taught drawing teacher and landscape painter. A follower of the English picturesque watercolour school, he recorded all the important events at the Cape for 35 years. His paintings reflect the quiet dignity of the stately buildings and wide, open streets of an earlier Cape Town that can still be felt in the Mother City today. He takes the reader as far east as Port Elizabeth, providing evocative glimpses of a pre-photographic phase in our history that would otherwise be lost. This volume will be cherished by all those who are fascinated by South African history and particularly by those who love Cape Town."