Kalk Bay, Evening

This coloured lithograph print depicts Kalk Bay in South Africa with birds perching on an outcropping of rocks and circling above the water. On the horizon, a mountain range can be seen, including Elsie’s Peak. Inscribed beneath the image with the title, ‘Kalk Bay, Evening’, and the artist and publication details: ‘Bowler Del. / J Needham, Lith. / Day & Son, Lithrs. To the Queen’.

The print is from a drawing by Thomas William Bowler (1812–1869), lithographed by Joseph Needham. It was part of Bowler’s ‘South African sketches: a series of ten of the most interesting views at the Cape of Good Hope’, published by Day & Son in 1854. Bowler was born in Hertfordshire and relocated to the Cape of Good Hope in 1834. He was a servant to Thomas Maclear, Her Majesty’s astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, but left this service in 1835. In 1838, he moved to Cape Town and took employment as a painter and art teacher. Bowler made around 540 artworks, 64 of these were published as lithographs.