Southern African Collections : Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee watercolours of Rhodesia and South Africa

Southern African Collections

<p style='text-align: justify;'>A series of watercolours commissioned from the Rhodesian artist Mrs Gilbert Stephenson to be used in colouring lantern slides to illustrate the fifth handbook, A.J. Sargent, 'South Africa: seven lectures (London, 1914). Stephenson had been recommended by the British South Africa Company. The numbering used in the catalogue reflects Stephenson's own numbering. The scenes cover: Northern Rhodesia [i.e. Zambia], including Victoria Falls and the Tanganyika Plateau; Southern Rhodesia [i.e. Zimbabwe], including Penhalonga, Umtali [Mutare], Matopos [Matobo National Park]; South Africa, including the Cape, Natal and Orange River Colony [Free State]; Basutoland [i.e. Lesotho], Qacha's Nek Camp.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The Rhodesian Study Circle identifies Gilbert Stephenson as a patent agent in Salisbury, Rhodesia. The identity of his wife, Mrs Gilbert Stephenson, is not known; she is possibly the artist E.J. Stephenson, who signed similar watercolour paintings of Rhodesian scenes as 'E.J.S.' The Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee was set up to provide lecture materials about the Empire for use in British schools. In 1907, Alfred Hugh Fisher (1867-1945) was appointed as artist and photographer to obtain the necessary illustrations in the course of Empire-wide tours. The scheme proved very expensive and the progress of producing textbooks was slow. The India volume appeared in 1910, but subsequent volumes on Canada (1914), Australia (1913), the Sea route to the East, and South Africa were written by Arthur John Sargent. Fisher himself had obtained additional photographs of places he was unable to cover. After the end of his engagement the Committee corresponded with official and unofficial bodies and individuals to augment its photograph collection, particularly for those areas Fisher had not visited at all - South Africa, tropical Africa and the Caribbean. The whole enterprise was an ambitious and imaginative one, but the lecture books, with their accompanying set of slides, were expensive and do not seem to have been widely purchased.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Digitisation funded through a Smuts library grant, 2019.</p>