The Victoria Falls from a Sketch by Thomas Baines (1866)

This hand-colored wood engraving is a highly significant piece of 19th-century exploration iconography. It depicts "The Victoria Falls of the River Zambesi, South Africa, from a Sketch by Mr. T. Baines, F.R.G.S." and was published as a large, folding panoramic supplement in The Illustrated London News (specifically in 1866, referencing page 290).

Behind this striking birds-eye perspective lies a fascinating intersection of artistic rivalry, imperial ambition, and technological showmanship:

The Fallout: Baines vs. Livingstone

While Thomas Baines is celebrated for these magnificent views, this specific image is born out of a bitter personal tragedy. In 1858, Baines was appointed as the official artist for David Livingstone’s famous Zambezi Expedition. However, the expedition was plagued by logistical failures and intense personality clashes.

Livingstone’s brother, Charles, accused Baines of stealing expedition store-provisions (a charge later proven entirely baseless). Livingstone, prone to harsh judgments, summarily dismissed Baines in disgrace in 1859. Determined to clear his name and prove his scientific and artistic worth, Baines launched his own independent expedition to the Falls from Namibia alongside trader James Chapman between 1861 and 1863. This woodcut is the direct fruit of that defiant, redemptive journey.

The Artistic Challenge: The "Smoke That Thunders"

In the 1860s, European artists were profoundly frustrated by Victoria Falls because its unique geology defied traditional landscape conventions. Unlike Niagara, where you can stand back and view the entire falls as a sweeping sheet, Mosi-oa-Tunya drops into a narrow, blinding chasm. If an artist stood at the lip, they were engulfed in a dense wall of mist.

To solve this, Baines climbed the hills on the western side to achieve this exaggerated, elevated bird's-eye perspective. By lifting the viewer above the landscape, he managed to show the Zambezi River calmly approaching the lip, the dramatic zig-zagging basalt gorges below, and the columns of spray ("the smoke") rising into the air simultaneously—a layout that became the definitive visual blueprint for how Europeans imagined the Falls.

The "South Africa" Misnomer

The caption at the bottom reads: "...the River Zambesi, South Africa..." To modern eyes, this looks like a geographic error, as the Falls sit between Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the mid-1860s, however, "South Africa" was not a geopolitical country but a vague, expansive British term for anything south of the equator on the continent. Publishing this print in London was a deliberate piece of soft-power cartography, visually claiming the interior for the British sphere of influence long before formal colonial borders were drawn.

Mass Media and the Illustrated London News

This print represents the cutting edge of 18th-century mass media technology. To get Baines's delicate field sketch onto the breakfast tables of Victorian London, a master wood-engraver had to meticulously trace the drawing onto a block of end-grain boxwood and carve away everything but the black lines.

Because a block large enough for a folding supplement would warp, the publisher used a composite grid of smaller wood blocks bolted together. If you look closely at the sky and the distant hills, you can occasionally spot faint vertical and horizontal lines where the blocks met. Once printed, these supplements were sold in black and white; the delicate watercolor washes on this specific sheet were painstakingly applied by hand by colorists working for the print shop or by a contemporary collector.

Companion to a Legendary Folio

Baines used the sketches from this exact 1862 trip to produce his magnum opus: the rare, large-format folio The Victoria Falls, Zambesi, Late Thomas Baines (published by Day & Son in 1865). Because that folio was prohibitively expensive and limited to wealthy subscribers, this Illustrated London News woodcut was the first time the general Victorian public was treated to a large-scale, accurate visual rendering of the great natural wonder.

Minor tears to the edges.

Graphic size: 360mm x 260mm

R3,500