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 A toll-house that was
erected in 1887 just below
the battery with the gun
carriages overlooking the
passing horse carriages, was
also occupied for many years
until the walls were demolished.
Many officials of the British East India Company were sent out to the
Cape on recuperative leave - often for a year or more. The Company
would put them on half pay if they returned to England on sick leave - but
on full pay if they were in the Cape, a great incentive for these ‘Indians’ to
spend their time recuperating in luxury in the warm and beautiful Cape
rather than struggling in the cold damp island that was their home. The
“malarial and liverish” officers of the Indian Army made Cape Town a
great matrimonial field.82 Some of these visitors were talented and well
educated men who were a very welcome addition to Cape society and left
records of their stay. One of these Indian visitors was Christopher Webb
Smith, a magistrate and judge in Bengal. When he was sent on sick leave to
Cape Town between 1837 - 1839, he visited Oliphant and made a beautiful
watercolour of the residence of A. Oliphant Esq., showing the house against
a dramatic backdrop of mountains.83 In the ten years since Comfield had
drawn the house, the reed fence had gone, the trees had grown, the
mountains had shrunk but at least the house remained the same.
 Another visitor on recuperative leave was Solomon Caesar Malan,84 a
brilliant polymath, Professor of Classics at Bishop’s College, Calcutta, who
was here in 1839 and spent some time in Camps Bay delighting in the
beauty of the scenery and painting several watercolours of the Camps Bay
beach and rocks now in the possession of the University of Stellenbosch.
In 1847 Camps Bay House was occupied by Mr Johnstone who let
rooms to enable visitors from India to “retire for the benefit of their
health” and provided food for picnic parties.85 Two paintings of Camps Bay
House made by Bowler five years before were bought in 1844 by the
grandson of a friend of Bowler’s, John Grave Biggs. One has an inscription
on the back by Biggs saying “Camps Bay House where I lived for nearly a
year before going to Algoa Bay and the Orange River.” Camps Bay must
have been a popular and “photogenic” scene with great appeal to artists
and collectors. Twenty-four paintings of Camps Bay are indexed in
Bradlow’s book86 on Thomas Bowler, some of Camps Bay House, some of
the beach and some of the view from the road. Whenever Bowler needed
to raise money he organized a lottery of some of his watercolours, and
included one of Camps Bay. He did this in 185687 to raise money (£10) to
buy a melodium for the Green Point Chapel, in 186188 to help finance his
school and again in 186889 when he got into legal difficulties. Bowler did
not get on with his neighbour Bam. When damp water oozed through
Bowler’s wall damaging some of his books and ornaments, he blamed Bam
and took him to court. The court decided that it was rain, not sink water,
that caused the damp and Bowler lost the case. Once more he included a
watercolour of Camps Bay among the pictures he sold through an art
lottery to recover the costs.
Villas Camps Bay
Less well known artists were Edward Churchill Mace, who arrived from
England in 1901 and settled in Sea Point where he was one of the founders
of the South African Society of Artists (SASA), and whose watercolour of
Camps Bay illustrated a book by Tucker in 1913 and W. Westhofen, who
participated in the 1903 SASA exhibition in Cape Town90 and whose
watercolour of Camps Bay illustrated a book by J.C. Juta in 1910.
No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the prior written consent
of both the publisher and Holiday Rentals in Cape Town
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