Strauss & co - 12 October 2015, Cape Town

149 366 William Cornwallis HARRIS BRITISH 1 807-1848 Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa (1840) London: Published for the Proprietor by W Pickering, printed by Hullmandel & Walton, folio, 30 aquatint plates, A.E.G., half red morocco, spine with emblematic tooling, repairs to title page, recased, light foxing, “V-shaped’ tear top of page 58 not affecting text or illustrations R140 000–180 000 367 Johann Christoph Ludwig ALBERTI GERMANY 1 768-1812 Zuid-Afrikaansche Gezeichten Otto Baron de Howen (fl 1808-1834) and Jacob Smies (1764-1833) artists Amsterdam: E Maaskamp, [1811].Mounted on guards throughout. 1p. letterpress description of the plates with drophead title above. 4 fine hand-coloured aquatint plates by L.Portman after Howen and Smies, printed by E Maaskamp. 20th-century half vellum. Amsterdam: E Maaskamp.[1811] Broadsheet 57,8 by 45,2cm R50 000–70 000 PROVENANCE FC Koch, Rotterdam (bookplate) Christie’s, London, Exploration and Travel , 17 September 1998, lot 76 A fine and very rare set of the “Alberti Prints” originally intended as an accompaniment to his De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika (Amsterdam: Maaskamp, 1810, 8°). Alberti “accompanied General J.W.Janssens when he preceded to the Cape as Governor of the Colony under the Batavian Republic, in 1802. He was a captain in the Fifth Battalion of the “Corps de Waldeck,”and in the following spring was sent to Fort Frederick in Algoa Bay, […] where he acted as landrost”(Mendelssohn I, page 18). The original drawings were apparently made on the spot by Baron de Howen, worked up by Smies in Amsterdam and then engraved and aquatinted by Portman. Otto Baron de Howen was a Russian-born artillery officer, while Jacob Smies, known chiefly as a caricaturist, was clearly employed here to give a professional polish to a gifted amateur’s work. Kennedy A18-21; Mendelssohn I, pages 17 and 18. 366 367