Charles Davidson Bell. Hunting Sketches. Hunting the Rhinoceros (1984)

Copy 10 of the limited edition of 150 copies of a portfolio of five reproductions of watercolour sketches by Charles Davidson Bell.

Bradlow's cover sheet to the portfolio of Bell's hunting sketches notes that Bell was only 21 when he was seconded as a "draughtsman and fit for anything" junior to Dr Andrew Smith's 1834 Cape Town Museum scientific expedition "to the northward" of the Cape Colony; but that when the expedition returned 18 months later he was second-in-command. George Ford was the expedition's senior draughtsman, recording the zoological discoveries, while Bell was responsible for the landscapes. Eventually, there were some 300 of these, which Smith kept for 10 years before returning them to Bell. These became dispersed, but the series of five "Hunting the Rhinoceros" sketches were reproduced from the approximate sixty owned by the John and Charles Bell Heritage Trust.

Three of the five reproductions, Nos 21, 23 and 24, show different stages of the same indident, in the Magaliesberg mountains, with the figures in European clothing being Khoi members of Smith's party. Nos 27 and 28 respectively illustrate "Bechuanas [Tswanas] attacking a Rhinoceros" and "Bushman [San] method of catching in pitfalls".