Thomas Bowler: His Life and Work by Frank R. Bradlow, Deluxe Edition (1967)

Copy No. 884 from a limited edition of 1,100 signed and numbered copies.

Thomas Bowler came to the Cape of Good Hope in 1834, not as a professional landscape artist, but as a servant/assistant to Thomas Maclear, the newly appointed Astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Cape Town. After a fallout with Maclear, Bowler left the observatory to set himself up as an independent drawing master and landscape painter.

Bowler's fiery temper and outspoken nature often landed him in public squabbles. He was famously dismissed from his position as art master at the South African College following a dispute over his teaching methods and character.

As noted in the Bradlows' bibliography listed on the copyright page (Here Comes the Alabama, 1959), Bowler was on hand in Table Bay on August 28, 1863, when the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama captured the Federal merchant ship Sea Bride. His immediate watercolor sketches of the incident became iconic visual records of the American Civil War reaching South African waters (and helped inspire the famous Afrikaans folk song Daar kom die Alibama).

A.A. Balkema, wasfounded by Dutch publisher August Aimé Balkema after moving to Cape Town in 1946, revolutionized South African fine press publishing by imposing exceptionally high standards of typography, paper quality, and colour plate reproduction for Africana titles.

255mm x 310mm x 40mm

Deluxe signed edition; dust jacket spine a bit faded; offsetting to the the front end papers; minor edge wear to the bottom of the boards

R2,000