Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • A View taken from Millbank
Date
1797/07
Medium
Pencil, pen and brown ink, watercolour
Inscription
  • sheet, recto, lower left
  • “F.Towne delt 1797”
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “A View taken from Millbank / of the first Windmill on the other / side the River Thames drawn / on the Spot July 1797 / by / Francis Towne / No114 new Bond Street / London”
Object Type
Watercolour

Catalogue Number
FT595
Description Sources
Christie's records (image)

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), on whose death it passed to Towne’s residuary legatee John Herman Merivale (1779–1844) and his successors. Merivale’s granddaughter Mary Ann Loveband (b.1865, alive in 1951; see also 499, 500) sold the drawing to Agnew’s (no.3099) on 22 July 1940 for £20 and it was bought from Agnew’s on 19 July 1940(sic) by H. G. Paterson (also FT546, FT784) for £36 15s. It was later owned by Walter Treverbian Prideaux (1875–1958) of Ockley, Surrey, who sold it at Sotheby’s on 6 June 1951, lot 33, for £52 to Agnew’s (no.6595). On 30 August 1951 Agnew’s sold it for £85 to J, Hawkesley Elliott of Sheffield (d. ca. 1978), whose daughter sold it at Christie’s on 14 March 1978, lot 84, for £1,200 to Spink. On 27 April 1979 Spink sold it for £1,500 to “a private UK collector”. It was sold at Sotheby’s on 17 November 1988, lot 109, for £2,900, whereafter it is untraced.

Associated People & Organisations

Untraced
Private Collection, 17 November 1988, GBP 2900
Sotheby's, London, London, 17 November 1988, lot 109
Private Collection, 27 April 1979, GBP 1500
Spink & Son, London, London, 14 March 1978, GBP 1200
Christie's, London, London, 14 March 1978, lot 84
Joseph Hawksley Elliot (1884 - 1978), Sheffield, 30 August 1951, GBP 85
Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 6 June 1951, no.6595
Sotheby's, London, London, 6 June 1951, GBP 52, lot 33
Walter Treverbian Prideaux (1875 - 1958), Ockley, Surrey, June 1951
H. G. Paterson, GBP 36.15s
Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 22 July 1940, GBP 20, no.3099
Joyce Merivale Loveband (1895), July 1940
John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
Exhibition History
[?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 15 or 16 as 'From Millbank'

Comment

This was perhaps made on 5 July, as another drawing of a nearby part of the south bank of the Thames is dated then (FT594).

by Richard Stephens

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