Cape Town

Art Historical Context

Maxwell Balfour’s “Cape Town,” dated 1900, is a compact and luminous drawing that captures a moment in the South African port city at the dawn of the twentieth century. Measuring only 12.8 by 17.9 centimeters, the work’s intimate scale encourages quiet, close looking, as if the viewer is sharing the artist’s firsthand experience of the place. Balfour used watercolor and gouache on blue wove paper, a combination that takes full advantage of the paper’s cool mid-tone. Transparent washes allow the blue ground to show through, while opaque gouache provides crisp highlights and details, giving the scene both atmospheric depth and lively accents. This technique was favored by many artists of the period for its portability and expressive range during travel. Now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art as a gift from William B. O’Neal, the drawing preserves a personal record of Cape Town while demonstrating the quiet beauty and technical refinement of works on paper from the turn of the century.