- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View of Part of Roche Rock
- Date
- No date
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey and brown inks, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 236mm,
- image length 364mm
- Support
- paper has a vertical crease mark down the centre and is watermarked with a coronet and fleur-de-lis design
- Mount
- mounted by the artist, with traces of gum at the verso bottom edge (as if it was once stuck into a portfolio)
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne / delt 1796”
- in thick brown ink
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “A View of part of Roch Rock, / in the County of Cornwall / Drawn by Francis Towne. / Mounted 1796, / in Exeter”
- in thick brown ink
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- FT587
- Description Sources
- Examination; Museum records (image)
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744-1825) on whose death it passed to the residuary legatee John Herman Merivale (1745-1844) and his successors. Merivale's grand-daughters Maria Sophia Merivale (1853-1928) and Judith Ann Merivale (1860-1945), both of Oxford, inherited the drawing in May 1915 (BP211). In February 1938 Judith Merivale sold it through Squire Gallery for 4.14s.4d. Sir Robert Clermont Witt (1872-1952; see also 155, 734) bought the drawing from Squire, and bequeathed it to the present owner, the Courtauld Institute of Art (Witt 1758).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Courtauld Gallery, London, London, 1952, D.1952.RW.1758
- Sir Robert Clermont Witt, February 1938
- Squire Gallery, London, February 1938, GBP 4.14s.4d
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945), Oxford, May 1915, BP211
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928), Oxford, May 1915, BP211
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
Other entries in Cornwall, Including Werrington, 1787–99
A Scene in Werrington Park, near Launceston in Cornwall
A Scene taken at Newport near Launceston, Cornwall
A View in Werrington Park, looking from the Terrace
Francis Towne and an Unidentified Pupil: A View of Launceston from Newport
Footnotes
- 1 Paul Oppé records: notes, ca. 1915.
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Comment
Roche Rock is a granite outcrop in the village of Roche, five or so miles north-west of St Austell in Cornwall. Antiquarian interest in the site focused on the ruins of a fifteenth-century hermitage that had been built onto the rocks. Oppé’s note reads: “Roche Rock 1796. Coloured over the brown hatching. Also black line. Light colour blue & green. NB some of this hatching is on back of 208 (1787) [i.e. FT542]. Mounted 1796 in Exeter.”1 Towne’s inscription “Mounted 1796 in Exeter” also appears on a view at Werrington (FT588).