Lieutenant Cowper Rose, Royal Engineers (d.1859), Sketches in the West Indies: an album of seventy-eight views taken in Barbados and St Vincent, 1833-1834

Lieutenant Cowper Rose, Royal Engineers (d.1859)
Sketches in the West Indies: an album of seventy-eight views taken in Barbados and St Vincent, 1833-1834
the majority titled and extensively inscribed, several dated 1833 or 1834
pencil and watercolour on paper mounted on the recto and verso of album leaves
the album 10 x 12in. (25.4 x 30.5cm.)
The album comprises fifteen watercolours of Barbados (four panoramic views on two joined sheets), and forty-two watercolours, fifteen drawings and one wash of St Vincent (six panoramic views on joined sheets), along with four coastal profiles of St Lucia, and coastal profiles of Martinique and Barbados.

An officer in the Royal Engineers, Rose was garrisoned on Barbados and St Vincent in 1833 and 1834. He had previously been stationed in the Eastern Cape in the 1820s and published an account of his time there (Four Years in Southern Africa, London, 1829). He drowned at Algoa Bay at the Cape in 1859. The Royal Engineers were tasked from the 1820s with building the Duke of Wellington's Uniform Barrack System in the West Indies, a programme of erecting standardised barracks and hospitals from cast iron units, to provide more resilient and healthy accomodation. Rose paints the scenery, including the military quarters and barracks, the sugar estates, and the botany on Barbados and St Vincent, two of Britain's fourteen sugar colonies in the West Indies. The early 1830s were the years of the West India Sugar Crisis as the American war, emancipation (the act of Parliament of 1807 had banned the African slave trade to the British colonies), and a falling market for sugar in Britain began to undermine the profitability of the trade.

The present watercolours and drawings comprise and are titled as follows:

BARBADOS
- Barbados Market Slave Girls
- Carlisle Bay and Bridge town from the Duke of York schooner off Barbadoes
- from the ante room of the Rl Engineer Quarter Barbadoes 1832 (with a key to the botany)
- Wooden Huts Long Road leading to St Anns Barbadoes (panorama)
- Carlise (sic) Bay Barbadoes from the Fort at the Burial Ground (panorama)
- A Garrison of St Anns, Barbadoes from the hill above it.
- [Barbados] (panorama)
- Sketch showing two species of the cactus in the foreground; the Tower on the left is St Anns Castle (in the distance) and the Barracks at St Anns.- the largest Building is the Soldier's Brick Barrack and then on its left the officer's Barrack in which the 93d. regt. were quartered in 1833 and 1834.-
- Carlisle Bay, Barbados from the Engineer Quarter. Cocos Nucifera. Nut bearing Cocoa.
- On the beach at the burial ground, Barbadoes
- The road to Austins [Oistins] Barbadoes near Worthing and looking towards St Anns (panorama)
- Grove of Mahogany Trees on the Austins Road - Barbadoes 1834
- A Sugar Mill grinding canes, near St Anns Barbadoes
- Distant View of Worthing on the West side of Barbadoes.-
- From the Engineer Quarter Barbadoes...

ST VINCENT
- A very grand view looking down from the High Ground under Mount St Andrews St Vincents of the Grenadine Island with Granada
[Grenada] in the Distance which is seldom visible.
- The Engineer Quarter St. Vincent 1834
- Engineer Yard St Vincent (with a key to the topography) (panorama)
- View from our Garden Terrace St. Vincent & this was our Hut for shade... (panorama)
- From Cane Garden Point opposite Fort Charlotte St. Vincent. (panorama)
- Fort Charlotte St. Vincent from the opposite side of Kingston Bay; on the right the road from Kingstown with the Drawbridge over the Rock to the Fort (with the key to the topography)
- Engineer Quarter with Mama & Betty on the terrace and black boy cutting guinea grass Mount St Andrew in the distance: The Barrier & Wall stop a Pass.
- Fort Charlotte St Vincent from the North Side (with a key to the topography)
- Rocks under the cliff at Fort Charlotte St Vincent Groups of the Groo-Groo Palm Trees supposed to be the Cocos Fusiformis
- St Vincents. From the Hill under Mount MacIntoshes (with a key to the topography)
- Mount St. Andrews and the Hills about it: from the bridal road leading from Fort Charlotte past Ottley Estate.
- [St Vincent]
- [St Vincent]
- From Old Woman's point looking towards Johnstons Point, St Vincent 1834
- Five vignettes: a West Indiaman waiting for sugar; the wasp St Vincent 21 decm 1833; Sugar cane in Seed called Arrowing; Stem of a silk cotton tree...; Sugar works on the Ottley Hall Estate
- From Margaret Gumons(?) St. Vincent.
- [St Vincent]
- A Silk Cotton Tree Bombex in one of the vallies near Fort Charlotte
- From Margaret G... looking down upon the sea
- Ottley Hall Bay and its Cocoa nut Trees.-
- Fort Charlotte looking up from Ottley Hall Bay
- The N.W. Side of Ottley Hall Bay
- In Buccamont Valley St. Vincent.
- On the pass of Go...ier, over the Vigie Ridge, St. Vincent.- (with a key to the botany)
- Mount Young Sugar Works belong to the Revd. J Browne. of Grand Sable Estate.
- The Grand Sable Estate House, as repaired after the Hurricane of 1831
- A view of the higher part of the Grand Sable Estate, St Vincent
- [St Vincent]
- [St Vincent]
- [St Vincent]
- [St Vincent]
- [St Lucia from St Vincent]
- St Lucia in the Distance from Owia the northern point of the Island of St Vincent
- Owia; the northernmost part of St Vincent (panorama)
- From the back of Mr Cumming's House, in the Carib Country, St Vincent (lot 14) looking South... St. Vincent June 1833 (with a key to the topography)
- St Vincent from the Duke of York. on leaving it
- St Vincent from the Duke of York Schooner on leaving it
- The last look at Fort Charlotte 1833- 31st December
- Slowly sailing on, but almost bicalmed on leaving St Vincent
- Petit Biahan Bay; a favourite resort of the Frolic boat Club St Vincent.
- Barrouallie
- St Vincent; looking back towards the East: vessel being close in 31st December 1834
- Part of the Bay of Layou (panorama)
- Shutting out Layou Bay St Vincent
- The Leeside of St. Vincent sketched from the Duke of York as he slowly glided on 31st December 1834
- Crosebys Estate
- Near Barrouallie, Leeward St Vincent
- The Souffriere Mountain of St. Vincent from Mr. Michael Whites (panorama)
- The Souffriere Volcano as we first got a view of it 31 Decr 1834; The Souffriere again as we advanced
- The Island of Bequia from the Engineer Quarter St. Vincent
- The Souffriere Mountain. The shaded part is the crater of the volcano. 7 furlongs in Diameter...
- Half way up the Souffriere on the Windward side, called the Valley of Rocks
- Looking into the crater with its lake about 70 fathoms deep of water. This is one of the grandest objects in the world.
- The Crater of the Souffriere
- View from The Terrace Engineer Quarter St. Vincent WR
- Looking down from the Souffriere on the Sea and the broken vallies below it. Although the thermometer was above 60° I could scarcely sketch for the cold.
- Cane Garden Point. The islands are Batavia and Ballasso (with a key to the topography)
- St Vincent when the Souffriere bore East
- 7 miles off the Coast of St Lucia 1st January 1834 the Pitons bearing S. by E.
- [St Lucia]
- St Lucia when off Morne Fortune
- [St Lucia]
- Martinique and West End of Barbadoes dist. about 15 miles off.-

Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.

Provenance

By descent from the artist to the present owner.