Pictorial Album of Cape Town, with views of Simon's Town, Port Elizabeth, and Graham's Town

Facsimile of the Juta edition of 1866.  Large, oblong 4to; original green cloth, lettered in gilt on spine and upper cover; pp. 44 + (24); 12 colour plates, one of which is folding; thick paper stock.  Earlier owner's bookplate to front free endpaper; scattered, light foxing. A lovely book.

"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."

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