The Circle August 2022

THE CIRCLE

In this issue:

1. Baines

The painter and adventurer Thomas Baines produced iconic pictures of colonial life in Southern Africa in the mid 1800’s and was the first artist to paint the Victoria Falls. He was a prolific traveler and visited most of Southern Africa and the northern part of Australia.

2. Vultures

The Golden Gate Highlands National Park, a 30-minute drive from Clarens on the R712, has superb views of the Maluti and Drakensberg mountains. It is also a good place to catch sight of a rare and interesting bird named the bearded vulture or lammergeier.

1.Baines

In June 1986, an expert from Sotheby’s Auctioneers in London arrived in Bloemfontein to meet a farmer from the Eastern Cape, to view two paintings which the farmer said he had inherited. The expert couldn’t figure out from talking to the owner on the telephone, exactly what he was going to find. The owner said he knew nothing about paintings and had difficulty in explaining what he had. The expert braced himself for the worst, expecting that the paintings would turn out to be prints. He was bowled over when, in a hotel reception room, the farmer unwrapped two of the most important original paintings ever executed by the painter and adventurer Thomas Baines.

Both paintings are scenes of the landing of the 1820 settlers at Port Elizabeth and were commissioned by another settler, the Reverend John Ayliff, the current owner’s great-great-grandfather.

After years of severe drought, the bankrupt farmer was hoping to sell the paintings to enable him to make a fresh start.

On auction in 1987, the first painting “The British Settlers in Algoa Bay 1820: Departure for the frontier” was bought by a private collector for R240,000, at that time the highest price ever paid for an art work in South Africa. The original now hangs in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, formerly the King George VI Art Gallery, in present-day Queberha (Port Elizabeth).

The second, “The landing of the British settlers in Algoa Bay in the year 1820”, was bought through public subscription by the same King George VI Art Gallery in Port Elizabeth for R150,000. It is currently on loan to the Albany Museum in Grahamstown. (Source: Weltz, Steven, Art at auction in South Africa, Donker Publishing, 1989)

The 1820 settlers were unemployed British citizens whom the British government sponsored to immigrate to the eastern frontier of the Cape colony after the Napoleonic wars. Between April and June 1820, over 4,000 settlers arrived, in 60 different parties. The settlers were granted farmland around the village of Bathurst.

Many settlers were artisans and traders who soon left Bathurst in search of a better life in the rapidly growing towns of Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and East London, thus making a significant contribution to local business and the economy.

Those who remained planted maize, rye and barley, and began the lucrative trade of wool farming, today a significant economic activity in the Eastern Cape.

THOMAS BAINES

Thomas Baines (1820 – 1875) was an artist, explorer and adventurer whose paintings and sketches provide a unique insight into colonial life in Southern Africa and Australia. Baines was a prolific painter. More than four hundred of his oils have been traced and scores more are in private collections. His output in water colours and pencil sketches was equally vast.

The diaries of his travels mark him as a superb scientific observer, but he was at heart an explorer and lover of wildlife who used his artistic skills to give the world an insight into what, almost two centuries ago, was still for many Darkest Africa.

Much of his painting was done in moments snatched at the roadside. It was not uncommon for him to sketch wild animals from the saddle, becoming totally absorbed and oblivious to any danger.

Today his pictures are in the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town , the National Library of Australia, National Archives of Zimbabwe, National Maritime Museum, the Brenthurst Library and the Royal Geographical Society in London. He is probably best known for his striking images of the Victoria Falls, painted over ten days in 1862.

Born in King's Lynn, Norfolk in 1820, Baines left England for South Africa at the age of 22, and worked in Cape Town as a scenic and portrait artist. He moved to the Eastern Cape in 1848 and was appointed as the official artist to the Colonial Forces in the Gaika War of 1851-53. This provided an outlet for his artistic talent and thirst for adventure.

His canvases and sketches illustrate many frontier incidents in the Eastern Cape as he journeyed beyond the Orange and Kei Rivers and over the Winterberg mountains, even attempting to reach the Okavango Swamps. During this time he painted the 1820 settler landings paintings.

In 1855 Baines journeyed to Australia as official artist and storekeeper to the Royal Geographical Society expedition across northern Australia, for three years.

Mount Baines and the Baines River in the Northern territories, were named after him.

David Livingstone, after “discovering” the Victoria falls in 1855, mounted a second Zambesi Expedition in 1858, to explore from the Falls to the Cahora Bassa rapids. Baines accompanied Livingstone as artist and storekeeper, but the two men had a fall-out and Baines was asked to leave the expedition.

Back in Cape Town, he linked up with explorer-hunter James Chapman. The two men planned to reach the Victoria Falls via Lake Ngami in Botswana and then travel down-river to the Zambezi River mouth. They left from Walvis Bay in South West Africa (present day Namibia) and after a perilous desert journey, they arrived at the Victoria Falls in July 1862.

For the next twelve days

Baines explored and sketched the Falls before painting his famous ten Victoria Falls scenes, becoming the first artist to capture this great river wonder.

Baines was skilled at portraying liquid. His Falls paintings capture the many changes of mood of the Falls from gently swirling eddies to the surging, pounding waters with spray and captive rainbows. His brushwork is so detailed that it is possible for a botanist to identify the various types of vegetation depicted.

FALLS PAINTINGS

The paintings were exhibited in Cape Town before being sent to London where, under the sponsorship of the Royal Geographical Society, they were published in January 1866.

The Victoria Falls paintings are justly regarded as Baines’ finest work. But the subscription list was meagre and instead of receiving profits, Baines had to pay for his presentation copies.

PAINTINGS

Today seven of the original paintings are in the National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare, two are in the Bulawayo Club in Bulawayo, and one is in the Royal Geographic Society in London.

AFTERMATH

After visiting the falls, the two men continued their journey downstream but were compelled through illness and lack of food to abandon the journey before reaching the river mouth. Baines returned to Cape Town in 1864, dispirited and fever-stricken.

In his final years, Baines obtained a concession to explore for gold in Matabeleland but failed to get material backing from his promoters. Whilst in Durban preparing his wagons for another visit to Matabeleland, he took ill and died on the 8th of May 1875. He is buried in the old West Street Cemetery, today known as the Brook Street Cemetery.

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Vultures

GOLDEN GATE

The Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Eastern Free State is just about four hours drive from Midstream, and a 30-minute drive down the R712, from the busy village of Clarens. The park has superb views of the Maluti and Drakensberg mountains. It is also one of the best places to catch sight of a rare and interesting bird, the bearded vulture or lammergeier.

You buy a permit at the park office before you turn off the main road onto a tarred strip road called the Oribi Loop, which leads you high up into the surrounding mountains.

GOLDEN GATE

About 3 kms after entering the Loop you reach the path to the Vulture Restaurant.

A short 5-minute walk along the path will take you to the lookout point and the hide.

VULTURE RESTAURANTS

A vulture restaurant is an area where park rangers leave poison-free carcasses, mostly donated by nearby farmers, for vultures and other scavengers. This supplementary feeding facility supports the threatened vultures in times of food scarcity.

The vulture restaurants are an effort to preserve and grow declining vulture populations. Farmers donate domestic livestock that is unfit for human consumption, which would otherwise have to be buried or burnt.

Poisoned carcasses which farmers set out as bait for other predator animals such as jackals and caracals, are one of the biggest threats to vultures.

Animal carcasses at vulture restaurants provide a safe feeding haven for vultures where uncontaminated food is supplied on a regular basis to adult birds and developing young.

Vulture restaurants provide land owners with a clean and cost-effective way of disposing of their unwanted carcasses.

In the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, carcasses are only put down at the weekends, ensuring that the birds do not become dependent on the additional food source. On days when there are fresh carcasses, you can view and photograph the Cape Vulture and the endangered Bearded Vulture as they feed at this, one of South Africa’s many vulture restaurants. The hide at Golden Gate is accessible to a few vulture colonies and is close to water sources. The surrounding landscape suits vultures perfectly as they breed and roost on cliff faces in mountainous areas.

The Lammergeier or Bearded Vulture is only found in the Pyrenees, Mount Everest, the European Alps, and the islands of Corsica and Crete. And in Africa in the Ethiopian Highlands, the Atlas and the Drakensberg Mountains.

In 1986 the species was completely extinct in the Alps, when conservationists banded together and founded a captive-breeding program at one of Austria’s national parks. Over the next 16 years they released 184 birds throughout Europe, and have since set up the International Bearded Vulture Monitoring project to study these birds in the wild. Estimates of the current global population vary between 1,300 and 6,700.

BONES

The bearded vulture is the only known vertebrate whose diet consists almost exclusively (70 to 90 percent) of bone.

The birds swallow small bones and drop the larger ones hundreds of feet to break them up on rocks and liberate the marrow—the most nutritious part of any bone-based diet.

The harder shards are easily digested by the Lammergeier’s stomach acid, which is more caustic than lemon juice.

SKY BURIALS

In Tibet, Sichuan, and Mongolia, the bone eating Lammergeier plays an important role in the Sky Burial ritual, the disposal of a corpse by feeding it to vultures. The body is cut into pieces by a Burial Master and taken to a sacred site in the mountains, where vultures devour the entire corpse including the bones.

The sky burial serves both practical and spiritual functions. The ground is often frozen, making it difficult to dig graves, and wood for funeral pyres is scarce and expensive. Sky burials provide a meal for the vultures and allow the physical bodies of Tibetans to be returned to the earth.

Tibetans believe the soul moves on from the body at the instant of death, and death is seen as a transition not an ending. In Sky burials the body becomes a last gift to the universe.

SOUTH AFRICA REGION

In Southern Africa the bearded vulture population is found in the highlands of Lesotho, the Free State, Eastern Cape, Maloti Mountains, and the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal.

During the 1970s and 1980s the population of the bearded vulture in southern Africa declined almost to extinction, but has since grown slowly.

Wikipedia estimates the total Southern African population as 408 adult birds and 224 young birds of all age classes, therefore giving an estimate of 632 birds.

SOUTH

Adult bearded vultures prefer to forage in higher altitudes situated close to their nesting sites.

The Drakensberg Escarpment between the Golden Gate Highlands National Park and the northern Eastern Cape has the greatest densities of bearded vultures. The Lammergeier hide at Giants Castle offers the best opportunities for bird photography and bird viewing.

Throughout history, people have blamed the three-foottall, 15 pound bearded vulture for carrying off livestock and even children (The Afrikaans name is “Lammervanger” and Lammergeier means “lamb vulture” in German). This is not a myth, it still happens.

According to legend, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, was killed at the age of 67, when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. The eagle is said to have mistaken his bald head for a rock and tried to use it to crack the shell of its prey.

The Circle is a private, limited edition magazine produced as a retirement hobby for family and friends, and fellow Midstreamers. The magazine is distributed at no charge. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Villa with lemon grove, Tuscany

Photographs in this issue have been sourced from the Nelson Mandela Art Museum, the National Archives of Zimbabwe, the Heritage Portal, Golden Gate National Park and SA Tourism websites.