Lot 37
Alexander, Sir James Edward (1803-1885)
Album of sketches from travels in Burma, India, Persia, Africa, Canada & Britain, 1820s-40s
Auction: The Library of General Sir James Alexander | Wed 25 February from 10am | Lots 31 to 62
Description
4to album (28 x 23cm), contemporary black half skiver, 88 sheets of sketches (in many cases with multiple sketches to a sheet), various media (pen and ink, pencil, and watercolour) and dimensions (approx. 9 x 6cm to 26 x 18cm), corner-mounted to rectos only of 55 album leaves, manuscript captions throughout (often dated), ownership inscription ‘Sir J. E. Alexander’, subjects comprising landscapes, coastal profiles, towns and settlements, portraits, ethnographic studies, artefacts, etc., including Uitenhage, ‘Bethelsdorp, an independent Hottentot monastic establishm[en]t’, a mountainous landscape where ‘Sir Benjamin D’Urban directed me to mark a line of defence …', ‘The Caffers of 1835 with whom we had to deal on the [?]Intebacandoda’, icebergs (including the ‘Albion taken back in the lee of an iceberg nr Newfoundland’), coastal views of Labrador and Cap Chat (Quebec), views on the St Lawrence River including the aurora borealis, ‘Forest Camp on the govt expedition 1844 exploring & surveying the military road, Halifax to Quebec’, objects seen at the Shwedagon ('Shoordagoon') pagoda (1825), Persian sculptures, a small portrait of Fath Ali Shah Qajar, ‘Bejanuggur 1824, a deserted Hindoo city’, the caves of Ellora (1824), Daulatabad fort (1823), ‘rough sketches about Assaye, 1823 (including fortresses, a native flute player, ‘tree under which Gnl Wellesley stood … gave portion of it to [various regiments] for boxes, a double coastal panorama of the Arabian coast including Ra’s Musandam, Oman (captioned ‘Ras Fillam, Arabia, 1827, on the voyage in brig of war I. N. Palinurus for Persian Mission … Cape Musseldom, Arabia, a very forbidding coast, infested with pirates', a view of ‘Bundemere, Persia’ (1826), tombs of Mordechai and Esther at Hamadan and of Hafiz and Sadi at Shiraz, a Persian palace, scenes in Scotland, Devon and Kent, and similar;
Together with approx. 24 loose sketches (various media and dimensions), including a military camp evidently in New Zealand ('Bell Block, from a sketch by Lt McKellar, Taranaki Militia', c.1860, pen and ink), the Curragh camp in Kildare (1859, watercolour), a tattooed Maori seated in cloak (watercolour), Pukerangiora and Te Arei Pa (New Zealand, c.1860, watercolour), a street scene apparently of London, Ontario (captioned on verso ‘London, Canada West’, watercolour), and similar, some of these possibly by other hands
Provenance
THE LIBRARY OF GENERAL SIR JAMES EDWARD ALEXANDER (1803-1885)