I posted this picture of the Settlers Family statue in Makhanda / Grahamstown on my Encounter the Eastern Cape page on Facebook recently and Dave Bowker told me something I never knew. Firstly what I did know. The monument was designed by the sculptor Ivan Mitford-Barberton and erected in 1969, but this is what I didn’t know. The three figures are Miles, Anne Maria and Elizabeth Bowker. Elizabeth married a Barber and was Ivan’s grandmother. Although there was no photograph of Miles, Ivan drew his likeness from his sons’ features. Elizabeth became a world- renowned botanist and botanical artist who shared her work with Charles Darwin.
Check out Mary Elizabeth Bowker’s Wikipedia page for more information on her.
Other monuments designed by Ivan Mitford-Barberton is the monument of Jock of the Bushveld in Barberton, the bronze statue of a leopard in Hout Bay, the sculpture of Peter Pan at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town and the Bible Monument Grahamstown.
