- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Part of Ambleside
- Date
- 1786/08/07
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and brown ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 159mm,
- image length 235mm
- Mount
- mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No.11 Morning light from the right hand 8 o’clock Part of Ambleside at the head of the Lake of Windermere. Drawn by Francis Towne August 7 1786, London July 5th Leicester Square: 1791”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- FT466
- Description Sources
- Examination; Museum records (image)
Provenance
Untraced until presented in 1924 by Fanny Jane Elizabeth Douglas (b.1865) to the current owner, the Victoria and Albert Museum (P.24-1924). Fanny Douglas was the daughter of John White Abbott’s son Revd John White Abbott (b.1799) by his fourth wife Jane Skardon.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1924, P.24-1924
- Fanny Jane Elizabeth Douglas (1865)
- Rev John White Abbott (1799 - ?)
- John White Abbott (1763 - 1851)
- Exhibition History
- [?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 72 as 'Part of Ambleside'
- Bibliography
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 128
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Comment
Although this is numbered 11, it appears to have been among the very first drawings Towne made in the Lake District, as it was drawn at 8:00 am on 7 August, the earliest date given to his work there (see also FT456, drawn the same morning). It has something of the Italianate flavour of FT464. With the sun rising on the right, it is presumably a view looking north on the road to Keswick.