Lot 125: BOWLER, THOMAS. 1812-1869. Panorama of Cape Town and Surrounding Scenery. [London]: Day & Son, [1851-5].

BOWLER, THOMAS. 1812-1869.
Panorama of Cape Town and Surrounding Scenery. [London]: Day & Son, [1851-5].
Lithographed panorama, 1165 x 233 mm (sheet 1262 x 377 mm). Printed in black and two colors. Light creasing overall, with abrasion to lower right corner resulting in loss to a speck of image, printed signature of Bowler trimmed closely with slight loss.

AN IMPORTANT EARLY VIEW OF CAPE TOWN, lithographed in London after Bowler's original watercolor. Table Mountain, on the right, and the Lion's Head and Signal Hill on the left frame a bucolic landscape including scattered handfuls of laborers - black and white – as well as the bay. Bowler was a celebrated painter active in South Africa from 1834 on, whose watercolors captured the early development of the British Colony and particularly the Cape Town Municipality, incorporated in 1840.