Lot Essay
Probably a scene on the Liddle expedition in the Eastern Cape which left Grahamstown in March 1848 Baines and took to the Colesberg vicinity, returning to Grahamstown in June 1848. In Grahamstown Baines worked up oils from his field sketches over the following year.
Baines had arrived in Grahamstown in early March, 1848, looking for opportunities to travel into the interior: 'He had not long to wait. A Mr. W.F. Liddle, of the Commissariat Department, was planning a recuperative journey to the north-east and perhaps beyond the Orange river. Baines joined him, leaving town on March 15th, on his first real South African journey, on horseback and with heavy Cape Wagons drawn by teams of fourteen oxen. He had never ridden before, but the colonial horse was bred for utility and not for points or 'manage' and after a few inevitable tumbles he soon learnt to keep his seat over all kinds of country. Everything interested him, his sketch-books were in almost constant use, and it would be possible to illustrate nearly every stage in his itinerary from his finished paintings.' (J.P.R. Wallis, Thomas Baines, Cape Town, 1976, p. 8).
Baines had arrived in Grahamstown in early March, 1848, looking for opportunities to travel into the interior: 'He had not long to wait. A Mr. W.F. Liddle, of the Commissariat Department, was planning a recuperative journey to the north-east and perhaps beyond the Orange river. Baines joined him, leaving town on March 15th, on his first real South African journey, on horseback and with heavy Cape Wagons drawn by teams of fourteen oxen. He had never ridden before, but the colonial horse was bred for utility and not for points or 'manage' and after a few inevitable tumbles he soon learnt to keep his seat over all kinds of country. Everything interested him, his sketch-books were in almost constant use, and it would be possible to illustrate nearly every stage in his itinerary from his finished paintings.' (J.P.R. Wallis, Thomas Baines, Cape Town, 1976, p. 8).