In the letter below, Oscar Norwich, Johannesburg historian and collector, provides fascinating insights into a rare lithograph of Cape Town from 1818 by Russian artist Ludwig Choris. Norwich's detective work in tracing the provenance of this artwork reveals connections to the historic Kotzebue expedition and adds valuable context to the early visual documentation of the Cape. The piece is a response to an article written by Eric Rosenthal for the June 1982 edition of the Quarterly Bulletin. Thank you to the Norwich family for permission to publish this letter.

I was particularly interested in the article "The Cape in 1818" by Eric Rosenthal.

I wish to indicate, in answer to the author's question in the first paragraph, that this important visitor to the Cape, Chamisso, has been known to me as such for the past two years. My knowledge of his visit and his stay at the Cape originated with an unusual and finely coloured lithograph of the Cape of Good Hope which I acquired from an Amsterdam book and print dealer on a visit to Holland over two years ago.

This lithograph is entitled Vue de la Ville du Cap de Bonne Espérance and has the name of an artist L. Choris in the left hand lower border and the name of the publisher on the right lower border. The vendor was unable to provide any information concerning its provenance or any details concerning the artist.

Since acquiring this fine view of the Cape I have researched the artist. I was rewarded with some detailed information both from the professional staff of the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Bibliothèque Nationale (to whom an approach was made because of the French title). This information appeared in two sources, namely Thieme's Dictionary of Artists and Nagler's Künstler Lexikon, and both provided similar and corroborative information.

Ludwig (Louis) Choris, a Russian artist and lithographer, was born in Jekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) in the Ukraine in 1775, and he was assassinated in 1828 in Vera Cruz. During his lifetime he was appointed the official artist for an expedition organised and headed by Otto von Kotzebue, who had previously sailed with a Baron von Krusenstern, a member of the Russo-German nobility, on the first Russian circumnavigation of the world and who was placed in command of the expedition. This project was fitted out at the expense of the Imperial Chancellor, Count Rumjanzoff (known as Romanzoff).

In the brig Rurick, with a crew of 27 men, including the writer and poet Chamisso and a scientist Eschholtz, Kotzebue sailed in 1815. The purpose of this expedition was primarily to find a long sought after North-West Passage and to explore lesser known parts of Oceania.

As the official artist of this expedition of 1815-1818, Choris made a great number of drawings and sketches (in Paris he had worked under Géraud and Regnault). Apart from the illustrations required of him for an official record for Kotzebue, he was persuaded on his return to Paris to prepare many of these unusual drawings and sketches for publication, particularly as they included portraits of a number of native rulers and other individuals not previously seen in Europe.

In 1822 Choris published his Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d'Amérique, d'Asie, d'Afrique, et des îles du Grand océan . . . with a frontispiece portrait, 104 coloured lithographic plates and two maps (one folding) in folio size printed by Firmin Didot in Paris. This volume included portraits of a number of native rulers and many beautiful scenes and views of native life, drawings of artefacts and sketches of natural history, twelve plates relating to California, nineteen of the Hawaiian Islands and twenty-three of Alaskan interest.

It was originally printed in twenty-two parts in two variant issues. The first, with both an 1820 and an 1822 title-page, included a portrait of the author as well as a frontispiece portrait of Count Romanzoff, the patron of the expedition. The second issue contained only the 1822 title-page and lacked the portrait of Choris, the artist.

It is interesting to note in the various references that on exploring the route to the Arctic Circle an island was named Chamisso. And now to ascertain where and in what context the view of the Cape of Good Hope featured in what has been described in Jonathan Hill's Collection of Pacific Voyages as one of the most beautiful books of travel in existence.

Once again I was pleased to receive a welcome and kind reply from the Bibliothèque Nationale after having sent them a photocopy of this lithograph. I was informed that it appears as Plate XXIII (see illustration), placed between Manille, Plate XXII, and Sainte-Hélène, Plate XXI. It has not yet been ascertained if there is any text or description in the book relating to this particular plate.

I sincerely hope that the authors of the original article on Chamisso derive the same degree of interest from the knowledge of this plate as I have gained from their description of his sojourn in the Cape.

Acknowledgements. I wish to place on record my sincere thanks to the Bibliothèque Nationale for their invaluable information and to the professional staff of the Johannesburg Art Gallery for their initial efforts in placing the artist. Also to Mr. Nat Cowan for his fine black and white reproduction of this lithograph.