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Lot Essay
Burchell set out from Cape Town in June 1811 on his travels in Africa, and covered four thousand five hundred miles in the interior, returning to the Cape in April 1815 with natural history specimens and five hundred drawings. A small selection of the latter (including the present watercolour) were engraved to illustrate his Travels.
There is a pencil drawing of the same subject dated '31.7.12' in the MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg (R.F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, VI, Johannesburg, 1971, Supplement A-G, B1907 'Mahutu was the younger of the chief Mahiti's two wives. Burchell obtained "a good likeness", but "it is not to be viewed as a specimen of genuine Bichuana features, as she posssessed more of the Kora, than of the Bachapin, countenance ... the bonnet-like appearance on her head, is produced by the peculiar mode in which Bachapin women dress their hair ... In her ear is a piece of reed, slightly ornamented with lines cut upon it. She wore a necklace of several strings of porcelain beads; and another of the sinews or entrails of animals, twisted into a thick cord...' [W.J. Burchell, op. cit., II, p. 494]".
There is a pencil drawing of the same subject dated '31.7.12' in the MuseumAfrica, Johannesburg (R.F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, VI, Johannesburg, 1971, Supplement A-G, B1907 'Mahutu was the younger of the chief Mahiti's two wives. Burchell obtained "a good likeness", but "it is not to be viewed as a specimen of genuine Bichuana features, as she posssessed more of the Kora, than of the Bachapin, countenance ... the bonnet-like appearance on her head, is produced by the peculiar mode in which Bachapin women dress their hair ... In her ear is a piece of reed, slightly ornamented with lines cut upon it. She wore a necklace of several strings of porcelain beads; and another of the sinews or entrails of animals, twisted into a thick cord...' [W.J. Burchell, op. cit., II, p. 494]".