Inside the Colosseum

Description

Creator: Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)

Title(s)

Inside the Colosseum

Date: ca. 1780/12/16

Medium: Pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour

Dimensions

image width 323mm,
image length 468mm

Support: laid paper with a vertical crease down its centre

Mount: mounted by the artist

Inscription

sheet, recto, lower right
“F.Towne delt. / Rome 1780 / No.16”

Inscription

artist's mount, verso
“No.16. / Inside the Coloseo [“Decr. 16 1780” scratched out] from ½ past 10 to 1 O Clock / Rome Francis Towne delt.”
in brown ink

Object Type: Watercolour

Collection

(Nn,2.22)

Catalogue Number: FT186

Description Sources: Examination; Museum records (image)

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White (1744–1825) of Exeter, who gave it in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.2.22).

Associated People & Organisations: British Museum; James White (1744 - 1825)

Exhibition History: [?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 164, 165, 166, 167 or 168 as Inside of the Coliseo; this edifice is of Travertina stone; or 169 or 171 as Inside of the Coliseo; Light, time, legacy: Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome, British Museum, 2016

Bibliography: Laurence Binyon, Catalogue of Drawings by British Artists and Artists of Foreign Origin Working in Great Britain Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum: London, 1907, p. 200; Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 75, 79, 124

Comment

This drawing depicts the inner arcade of the Colosseum at ground level, with steps leading up to the area of seating known as the maenianum primum. By drawing the two figures on the stairs in an artificially small size, Towne has magnified the monumental scale of the architecture.

This is one of three bold studies of the Colosseum’s arcades (see also FT191, FT192) of a type common in the late eighteenth century due to the popularity of Piranesi’s etchings from which they derive.

by Richard Stephens

Other entries in Rome Series, October 1780–July 1781

Francis Towne