THE CAPE IN 1776-77 - edition limited to 550 copies

Publisher's green cloth binding with titles in gilt on front panel. 

16pp of text followed by a series of 56 finely sketched aquarelles by Johannes Schumacher from the Swellengrebel-collection at Breda.

Only 550 copies printed. Very scarce.

Hendrik Swellengrebel was the first Governor of the Cape Colony native to its shores. After a very successful governorship under which the Colony prospered, Swellengrebel retired with his family to Holland. His second son, also called Hendrik, was the more cultured and scientifically-minded of his children. Thus, having scarcely settled in Holland, the younger son already started making plans for an expedition through his native Cape Colony.

He arrived at the Cape on 17 February 1776 and immediately began an admirable series of journals, notes and commentaries, which have proved so excellent a source for our knowledge of Cape history in the late eighteenth century. He was accompanied on his journey by two friends and a few servants, among whom was Johannes Schumacher, a draughtsman in service of the Dutch East India Company. Almost nothing is known about Schumacher apart from a few scant references in Swellengrebel's journal, where he is referred to only as "The Draughtsman". By a fortunate coincidence we know his name, as two of his surviving drawings are signed. He was, like so many others, a German in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, which can be deduced from his captions, written varyingly in either fine German or bad Dutch. In the corner of one of his drawings he has treated posterity with a self portrait, where he can be seen sitting on a rock, idling. This image is unfortunately not included in the present portfolio but can be seen in Godée-Molsbergen's book Reizen in Zuid-Afrika. Despite Schumacher's obscurity his work is of the highest historical value, as it forever captures the Cape as it appeared at the time of Frederick the Great, and the period just before the French Revolution and the arrival of that unmistakably French, and self-professedly valiant, Francois Levaillant.