A critical reassessment of the explorer artist Charles Davidson Bell's (1813–1882) Cattle Boers' Outspan (n.d.)

Abstract

This article investigates the depiction of Afrikaner ancestry in Charles Davidson Bell’s (1813-1882) Cattle boers’ outspan (s.a.) (fig. 1) within the genre of explorer art. This critical revisiting of Bell – better known to philatelists as the designer of the much sought-after Cape triangular stamp – is regarded as important because it give rise to questions such as how Bell and his contemporaries employs critical devices and visual codes that served to entrench and naturalise debasing perceptions of the subjects of their depictions. It is argued that Bell’s work within the genre explorer art generally falls distinctly within the category of social documentation, which served the purpose of illustrating the curious and exotic within a South African historical context for a European audience. We also suggest that in the light of the scientific bias during the Victorian age that underpinned the depiction of colonised peoples, the notion of persuasive imaging is not only confined to the depiction of landscape but also to colonial depictions of Lacanian notions of O/others and O/otherness