- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Ivy Bridge in Devon
- Date
- 1775
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 200mm,
- image length 325mm
- Support
- laid paper
- Mount
- mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower right
- “F.Towne / delt 1775”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “Ivy Bridge in the County of Devon / drawn on the spot / [erased] / by / Francis Towne”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Versions
- A View of Ivy Bridge
- Catalogue Number
- FT052
- Description Sources
- Information at Sotheby's, London
Provenance
Untraced until in the collection of Professor Reginald Alton (1919–2003) of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, from 1955 or earlier. Alton sold it at Sotheby’s on 19 March 1970, lot 139, for £1,400, where it was bought by John Mitchell & Son. It was sold at Sotheby’s on 13 November 1980, lot 35, for £4,000, and again at Sotheby’s on 10 March 1988, lot 85, for £13,000, whereafter it is untraced.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Professor Reginald Alton (1919 - 2003)
- John Mitchell & Son, London
- Sotheby's, London
- Untraced
- Exhibition History
- [?] Early English Water-Colours and Drawings, Squire Gallery, 1933
- [?] Loan Exhibition of English Watercolour Drawings in Aid of the Friends of the Courtauld Institute, John Mitchell & Son, London, and Drapers Hall, London, 1970, no. 58
- Bibliography
- Luke Herrmann, 'Review: Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting', The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, No. 720, Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd: London, 1963, p. 133
- Luke Herrmann, British Landscape Painting of the 18th Century, Faber: London, 1973, p. 75
Other entries in West Country Sketches, 1772–80
Francis Towne
A View of Exeter, taken between Exwick and Cowley Bridge
A View of Exeter, taken between Exwick and Cowley Bridge
Francis Towne
A View of Berry Pomeroy Castle within the Gateway
A View of Berry Pomeroy Castle within the Gateway
Francis Towne
A View going up from the Lake in Peamore Park
A View going up from the Lake in Peamore Park
Francis Towne
A View from the Hill above the Lake at Peamore
A View from the Hill above the Lake at Peamore
Francis Towne
A View near Exwell, looking towards Topsham
A View near Exwell, looking towards Topsham
Francis Towne
A View of the Waterfall at Lidford in the County of Devon
A View of the Waterfall at Lidford in the County of Devon
Footnotes
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Comment
Ivy Bridge was a small village just below the southern tip of Dartmoor,1 named after its ivy-clad bridge crossing the Erme river. Towne’s large and highly coloured view suggest that by the mid-1770s he was not only gaining work on aristocratic estates but making business from Devon’s picturesque spots. Ivy Bridge’s picturesque qualities were well appreciated in the 1770s and 1780s,2 and Towne’s version dated 1784 also survives (FT412). Either this or the 1784 work was the 1933 Squire exhibit, called “exceedingly beautiful” by a reviewer.3