Title: A view of Aliwal North
Medium: Watercolour
Unframed: 29cm x 48.5cm
Framed: 70cm x 88cm
Thomas Bowler was a self-taught English picturesque water-colourist, and according to Pama (1977:4) because of him “we know more (pictorially) of this period than any other previous Cape period; if we take only original work into account this holds also for any after him. He is the Cape painter of the middle of the nineteenth century par excellence.”
During the 35 years he lived in Cape Town he often travelled to the interior of South Africa producing beautiful landscape paintings and drawings, like this painting titled: A view of Aliwal North.
The town of Aliwal North was formerly founded in 1850, by Sir Harry Smith, the then Governor of the Cape Colony. He named the town in memory of his victory over the Sikhs at the Battle of Aliwal during the First Sikh War in India in 1846. The town developed simultaneously as a health resort and transport centre with the railway from East London reaching the town in 1885 (South Africa 2021:1).
