Sketches of some of the Various Classes and Tribes inhabiting the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and the Interior of South Africa

Fifty-nine watercolours by this artist active in Cape Town (including versions of all of the present subjects except nos 4 'Malay Woman', 18 'Fingoo Woman', 24 'Hottentot Man' and 28 'Vegetable Seller') are in the collection of the MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg, for which see R.F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, 1968, V, pp.103-117, nos W2-W60. White's book with plates by Dickinson & Co. (Abbey, 340), reproduces all of the present subjects except for nos 4 'Malay Woman' and 42 'Zoola Lady – Mother of a Town'. For the lithographs see R.F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Prints in the Africana Museum ..., II, Johannesburg, 1976, W2-W43. White's work was also reproduced elsewhere, without acknowledgement. Alfred Gordon-Brown identified the artist, previously identified only by the initials 'J W' in 1975: 'The artist 'J W' who sold small drawings, principally of local types, through the C[ape] T[own] stationers, and whose identity has been the outstanding mystery of Africana pictures, is now shown with reasonable certainty to be not 'J Walker' as was so long supposed, but a J White, probably John.' (A Gordon-Brown, Pictorial Africana, Cape Town and Rotterdam, 1975, p.240). The artist's identity was revealed when a folder of his drawings titled 'A collection of characteristic 24 sketches by J. White Esq., Cape of Good Hope' came up for sale at auction in Gloucester in the early 1970s, the drawings now in the MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg.