£945
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 739
Auction: 21 June 2023 at 11:00 BST
Album 1: beginning on a cruise onboard the Union Castle Line, SS "Gaul", December 1903 - February 1904, sailing to South Africa past Capo Verde, the album containing manuscript menus, 2 laid-in watercolours of Capo Verde, 6 watercolours of the South African coast including Table Bay, several South African ink sketches, various laid-in South African postcards, several watercolours of South African landscapes including three watercolours of plantations in the Drakenburg Mountains, many pressed botanical specimens, several photographs mostly depicting tourists but also with three showing a Zulu wedding with the wedding party, bridesmaids and the bride and groom, several botanical watercolours, documentation from travel on to Lourenço Marques (Maputo), Mozambique, and Tanganyika with several watercolours, botanical illustrations and photographs, some documentation from the return cruise on the RPD "Herzog" of the Deutsche Ost-Afrika-Linie, with a watercolour painting of Bab-el-Mandeb, album 26.5 x 36.5cm, disbound
Album 2: beginning on a cruise onboard the Deutsche Ost-Afrika-Linie, RPD "Tabora", December 1913-April 1914, sailing to South Africa from Marseille via Corsica, Naples and Port Said, Aden and Somaliland (Somalia), with many watercolours of views seen on the journey, alongside paintings of life onboard ship (such as the Christmas ball), the ship arriving in Kenya on Christmas Eve 1914 and including four watercolours of Mombasa, the journey continues to Tanganyika with watercolours of a local house and a baobab tree, with several botanical specimens before moving onto Zanzibar and Mozambique, before arriving in South Africa in February 1914. The South African section of the album comprises 30 watercolours (including Drakensberg Mountains, Mooi River Falls, views in Kamberg, Karkloof Falls, a local hut, scenes in Johannesburg and Pretoria and Table Mountain), several original photographs (mainly of tourists but some images of horsemanship), and a collection of pressed botanical specimens. The return journey leads through Namibia (five watercolours) and the Canary Islands. A typed travelogue of the journey to South Africa is loosely inserted.
Provenance: A cabin ticket for Miss Smythe and Miss M. Boyle is pasted to the initial leaf of the second album. One or two watercolours are signed 'Boyle', while a loosely inserted letter is signed Effay Smythe.