An accomplished amateur watercolourist with a technique of fine, delightful precision and refinement, Alice Balfour possessed in great measure a faculty for recording the striking visual beauty of southern African scenery.

The outward facts of her life were few. Born at Whittingehame, East Lothian, in 1850, Alice Blanche Balfour was the youngest daughter of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Cecil. Niece of the statesman Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister for the third time shortly after these scenes were sketched, and sister of A. J. Balfour, philosopher and politician who attained to the same high office, she was a life-long spectator of Imperial politics from the inside. One of a talented family, she was not without talents herself; indeed, a contemporary observed that she herself was capable of governing the country, which elicited the retort, "I never did think much of that man's brains." Be that as it may, modesty combined with a certain asperity were distinctive features of a character 'never unjust except, unfortunately, to herself.' She has been described as 'full of repressed grudges and secret sorrows and, in words more charitable as well as illuminating, 'extraordinarily sensitive about her "extreme plainness" .

In her unpublished journals little of her reticence is reflected and she appears admirable as a woman of spirit, interesting for her varied intellectual pursuits. But the development of her powers may well have been thwarted.

THE SOUTHERN AFRICA ART OF ALICE BALFOUR

We present a representation of all ten prints, together with the description from the documentation that accompanies this magnificent collection. Each print is printed on high quality card stock paper, ideal for framing and mounting.

The collection comes in a hardbinder with the artists signature embossed thereon.

A fantastic and rare collection of Rhodesia in 1894. See it as the first white settlers saw it.

Memories of Rhodesia, Inc.
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