- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Netley Abbey
- Date
- 1789 - 1809
- Medium
- Pen and ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 354mm,
- image length 490mm
- Support
- two sheets, each with vertical crease marks down the centre
- Mount
- mounted by the artist on paper watermarked “J.RUSE / 1804”
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne delt / No4 1809 [over scratched-out “1798”]”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No4 Netley Abbey drawn on the spot / Francis Towne”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (T08194)
- Catalogue Number
- FT601
- 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 Towne’s residuary legatee John Herman Merivale (1779–1844) and his successors. Merivale’s daughter-in-law Caroline Penelope Robinson gave it to her daughter-in-law Elizabeth Pittman (perhaps on 1 October 1915), whereafter it is untraced until it was acquired by Paul Oppé (1878–1957; no.1912) at Sotheby’s on 8 November 1928, lot 105. His descendants sold it in 1996 with the rest of Oppé’s collection to the present owner, the Tate Gallery, London (T08194).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Tate, London, 1996
T08194 - Adolph Paul Oppé (1878 - 1957), London, 8 November 1928, no.1912
- Sotheby's, London, London, 8 November 1928
lot 105 - Elizabeth Pittman
- Caroline Penelope Robinson
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
- Exhibition History
- The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, Royal Academy of Arts, 1809, no. 330
- Francis Towne, Tate Gallery; Leeds City Art Gallery, 24 June 1997 - 4 January 1998, no. 64
- Bibliography
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 103, 147
Other entries in London, Hampshire and Surrey, ca. 1782-1801
Francis Towne
A View in Hyde Park looking towards the Serpentine River
A View in Hyde Park looking towards the Serpentine River
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Comment
This is a view of the transept of Netley Abbey, just south of Southampton on the east banks of Southampton Water, in Hampshire. In 1796 Michael Angelo Rooker exhibited at the Royal Academy a work based on his visit the previous October, which is close to Towne’s view.
Towne has given his drawing a date of 1809 although only after scratching out the previous date of 1798. It is almost certain to have been his 1809 Royal Academy exhibit, which he sent from 39 Queen Anne Street West. Oppé made a note of this drawing on receipt of it in 1928, as follows:
Evidently Oppé considered this to have been the original frame.