Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.10745
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‘Booshooana Man & Woman’
Date
1806
Creator
Thomas Medland (1755 - 1827, British) , Engraver
After
Object type
Library reference
26670
Material
Technique
Dimensions
height (print): 278mm
width (print): 212mm
width (print): 212mm
Subject
Description
Portrait of an African couple identified as natives of ‘Booshooana’, likely in reference to the Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana. The man wears a hide cloak and carries a hunting spear. The woman reclines and is shown smoking tobacco from a pipe, the smoke drawn through water held within a cattle or eland horn. An iron agricultural hoe is on the ground beside her near two ceramic vessels.
Plate 20 from the book A voyage to Cochinchina, in the years 1792 and 1793...to which is annexed an account of a journey, made in the years 1801 and 1802, to the residence of the chief of the Booshuana nation...southern Africa...by John Barrow (London, 1806).
Printed below: “Drawn by W.Alexander from a sketch by S.Daniel Engraved by T.Medland. Booshooana Man & Woman. Publish’d June 4, 1806, by Messrs.Cadell & Davies, Strand, London”.
The artist Samuel Daniell accompanied the expedition of William Somerville and Petrus J Truter (1775-1867) from Cape Town in South Africa (then the Cape Colony) north to the border of Botswana in 1801-1802.
William Somerville (1771-1860) British surgeon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1817. In 1806 he entered the British army as garrison surgeon to Cape Town, and was present when British colonial forces took the Cape of Good Hope.
Plate 20 from the book A voyage to Cochinchina, in the years 1792 and 1793...to which is annexed an account of a journey, made in the years 1801 and 1802, to the residence of the chief of the Booshuana nation...southern Africa...by John Barrow (London, 1806).
Printed below: “Drawn by W.Alexander from a sketch by S.Daniel Engraved by T.Medland. Booshooana Man & Woman. Publish’d June 4, 1806, by Messrs.Cadell & Davies, Strand, London”.
The artist Samuel Daniell accompanied the expedition of William Somerville and Petrus J Truter (1775-1867) from Cape Town in South Africa (then the Cape Colony) north to the border of Botswana in 1801-1802.
William Somerville (1771-1860) British surgeon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1817. In 1806 he entered the British army as garrison surgeon to Cape Town, and was present when British colonial forces took the Cape of Good Hope.
Associated place