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拍品专文
For what is probably a preliminary study for this picture, see the pencil sketch reproduced in R. F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, 1966, vol.1, pp.36-38, cat. B96 ('Table Bay and Mountain').
Baines recorded in his journal how he embarked on his career as a painter in Cape Town, prompted by a string of commissions for local marine subjects: 'It was about this time that, during a severe gale from the north-north-west, two fine barques, the one a slaver and the other the ill-fated Francis Spaight, were driven on shore in Table Bay and twenty-seven of the crew of the latter and of those who volunteered to their assistance were drowned. For weeks afterward that fearful spectacle haunted my imagination. I could not close my eyes but the wild despairing countenances of the perishing seamen appeared before me 'plain and palpable to sense' as on the morning of the wreck, and it was long before I could reconcile myself to the idea of painting for profit a representation of that dreadful reality, of making money, as it were, of the sufferings of those whose grave was in the deep. At length I produced two pictures and disposed of them, and the subject soon became so general a favourite that I received commissions for it in every possible point of view; and this, with portraits of Indiamen and other vessels, and the never failing 'Cape Town with Table Bay and Mountain', kept me in full employment , ...' R. F. Kennedy (ed.), Journal of a Residence in Africa 1842-1853 by Thomas Baines, vol. I (1842-1849), Cape Town, 1961, pp. 8-9.
The present picture is an example of one of these early commissions (this from an American whaling captain) of shipping in Table Bay's stormy waters. Baines includes here the beached American ship Israel, which had run aground at Salt Water on 9 April 1847. Cape Town remained an unsheltered port, without a breakwater and proper harbour, until Prince Alfred laid the foundations for the breakwater on 17 September 1860 (an event witnessed and painted by Baines).
Baines recorded in his journal how he embarked on his career as a painter in Cape Town, prompted by a string of commissions for local marine subjects: 'It was about this time that, during a severe gale from the north-north-west, two fine barques, the one a slaver and the other the ill-fated Francis Spaight, were driven on shore in Table Bay and twenty-seven of the crew of the latter and of those who volunteered to their assistance were drowned. For weeks afterward that fearful spectacle haunted my imagination. I could not close my eyes but the wild despairing countenances of the perishing seamen appeared before me 'plain and palpable to sense' as on the morning of the wreck, and it was long before I could reconcile myself to the idea of painting for profit a representation of that dreadful reality, of making money, as it were, of the sufferings of those whose grave was in the deep. At length I produced two pictures and disposed of them, and the subject soon became so general a favourite that I received commissions for it in every possible point of view; and this, with portraits of Indiamen and other vessels, and the never failing 'Cape Town with Table Bay and Mountain', kept me in full employment , ...' R. F. Kennedy (ed.), Journal of a Residence in Africa 1842-1853 by Thomas Baines, vol. I (1842-1849), Cape Town, 1961, pp. 8-9.
The present picture is an example of one of these early commissions (this from an American whaling captain) of shipping in Table Bay's stormy waters. Baines includes here the beached American ship Israel, which had run aground at Salt Water on 9 April 1847. Cape Town remained an unsheltered port, without a breakwater and proper harbour, until Prince Alfred laid the foundations for the breakwater on 17 September 1860 (an event witnessed and painted by Baines).