Thomas Baines
(1820–1875)
Thomas Baines was an English artist and explorer of British colonial southern Africa and Australia. Born in King's Lynn in 1820 Baines was apprenticed to a coach painter at an early age. When he was 22 he left England for South Africa aboard the "Olivia" and worked for a while in Cape Town as a scenic and portrait artist and as official war artist during the so-called Eighth Frontier War for the British Army.
In 1855 Baines joined Augustus Gregory’s 1855–1857 Royal Geographical Society sponsored expedition across northern Australia as official artist and storekeeper. The expedition’s purpose was to explore the Victoria River district in the north-west and to evaluate the entire northern area of Australia in terms of its suitability for colonial settlement. Baines was greatly commended for his contribution to the expedition, to the extent that Mount Baines and the Baines River were named in honour of him.
In 1858 Baines accompanied David Livingstone along the Zambezi, and was one of the first white men to view Victoria Falls. In 1869 Baines led one of the first gold prospecting expeditions to Mashonaland in what later became Rhodesia.
From 1861 to 1862 Baines and James Chapman undertook an expedition to South West Africa. This was the first expedition during which extensive use was made of both photography and painting, and in addition both men kept journals in which, amongst other things, they commented on their own and each other’s practice.
In 1870 Baines was granted a concession to explore for gold between the Gweru and Hunyani rivers by Lobengula, leader of the Matabele nation and it was during this expedition that the present work was executed. This expedition is documented in great detail in Baines’The Gold Regions of South Eastern Africa [1] published posthumously in 1877.
Baines is best known today for his detailed paintings and sketches which give a unique insight into colonial life in southern Africa and Australia. Many of his pictures are held by the National Library of Australia, National Archives of Zimbabwe, National Maritime Museum, Brenthurst Library and the Royal Geographical Society.
[1] The Gold Regions of South Eastern Africa, Thomas Baines, Edward Stanford, London 1877.