This watercolour is probably the work of either John Herschel or his wife Margaret Brodie produced while they were living in South Africa in the 1830s.

The Herschels spent four years living in South Africa while John worked on his project to catalogue the double stars, star clusters and nebulae of the Southern hemisphere (completing a project he had begun with his father for the northern hemisphere). In that time they took a good deal of interest in their surroundings.