Thomas William Bowler

In 1850 he published The Anti-convict Agitation, a print of the large gathering held in Cape Town on 4 July 1849, objecting to the landing of convicts from the penal transportation ship Neptune.

[2] In May 1854 he returned to England, where he received tuition from the artist James Duffield Harding, and was back in Cape Town in March 1855.

He painted two historically important pictures of the start of the 1859 Cape Town to Wellington railway line, the first in South Africa; and another two of its opening in November 1863.

During his time in South Africa, Bowler travelled widely in the Cape Colony, and visited Knysna and Port Elizabeth along the Garden Route.

His journeys produced a large number of paintings and sketches such as The Kaffir Wars and the British Settlers in South Africa (1865), and the Pictorial album of Cape Town, with views of Simonstown, Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown (1866).