- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Lake Como
- Date
- 1785
- Medium
- Pencil (?), pen and grey ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 315mm,
- image length 490mm
- Support
- laid paper watermarked "WHATMAN"
- Mount
- mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “Francis Towne delt 1785”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “[. . .]drawn by Francis Towne / 1785”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT424
- Description Sources
- Sotheby's records (image)
Provenance
Untraced apart from its sale by “a lady” at Sotheby’s on 15 March 1984, lot 133, for £20,000 to Agnew’s.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Untraced
- Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 15 March 1984, GBP 20000
- Sotheby's, London, London, 15 March 1984
lot 133
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Comment
This is a version of a lost drawing (FT351), which, from the similarity of the composition with a view of Lugano (FT346), probably once formed part of the series of large north Italian and Swiss views drawn on paper watermarked “Honig” and measuring about 280 x 470 mm.
Two later versions are dated 1787 (FT535) and 1800 (FT618). Towne’s 1805 exhibit no.128, The City and Lake of Como, was doubtless either the 1800 work or else another treatment of the same subject.