An Exhibition of Paintings and Sketches of South Africa and the Rhodesias (with handwritten annotations; 1949)

Frank Beresford had been a well-known English artist for almost fifty years when he travelled to Portsmouth to paint H M S Vanguard returning the Royal Family after their tour of South Africa ended in May 1947. He was so impressed with what they had achieved and with their reception - in particular Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen - that he soon followed in their footsteps, embarking on a 10,000-mile 14-month caravan tour of Southern Africa. One hundred of the works he painted and sketched on this tour were exhibited in London in 1949, and this lot is the catalogue of that exhibition.

The catalogue is illustrated by 16 plates, one in colour. It includes a biography and photograph of the artist, and, as a loose insert, an order form for the artist\'s prints, which he produced by the thousand at the Beresford Press. Postcard-sized colour prints from his Southern African tour went on sale for ninepence (7.5 SA cents) each, but a current asking price for his colour postcard of Field Marshal Smuts, reproduced in monochrome in the catalogue, is US$87!

This copy is extensively annotated by the artist. On the cover he writes from Sussex in 1960 - at the age of 79 - that the recipient should excuse this \"soiled copy\". Fifty years later, we can state that while the back cover is slightly \"soiled\" (compared with another copy we bought from the same estate which has fewer annotations), it remains in very good condition.

On the flyleaf, the artist notes how many had attended his exhibition - including the Royal Family - and that the Queen (then the Queen Mother) had bought the original of \"Vergelegen\", which is also illustrated in the catalogue.

The catalogue itself has his handwritten notes of paintings that were sold and titles that needed to be corrected.

And on the order form is another note recording that the 60,000 postcards he had produced for South Africa (with customs clearance) had been banned by the new government that had come into power in 1948.