Important South African & International Art, Decorative Arts & Jewellery
Live Auction, 14 March 2016
Session 3
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
About this Item
inscribed on the reverse with the title and 'for Captain Wood', in pencil
Notes
This relates to the group of seven finished watercolours in MuseuMAfricA which Kennedy attributes positively to Bell. The initials 'FG' lower left are consistent with other Bell watercolours which bear initials which seem to function as some kind of coding. In the opinion of Michael Godby, Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Cape Town, "Charles Bell is one of the most significant - and interesting - of all nineteenth-century South African artists."
cf. RF Kennedy. (1966) Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum. Johannesburg; Africana Museum. pages 178-181, B787-793.
cf. Phillida Brooke Simons. (1998) The life and work of Charles Bell, Cape Town: Fernwood Press.
cf. Michael Godby. (2015) Battleground, Charles Bell's drawings of the War of the Axe, 1846, Cape Town: Primavera Publishing
We are grateful to Michael Godby for his assistance in cataloguing this work.
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