- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- The Colosseum
- Date
- 1799
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 310mm,
- image length 465mm
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne / 1799”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “Rome The Coloseo, with the Baths of Titus, & Arch of Constantine, taken from the Palatine Mount. Francis Towne delt 1799”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (P96)
- Versions
- The Colosseum
- Catalogue Number
- FT602
- Description Sources
- Examination; Museum records; 1998 Royal Academy catalogue (image)
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Arthur Harington Champernowne (1768–1819), whose great-great-granddaughter Katharine Iris Paull of Chichester sold it at Sotheby’s on 30 July 1952, lot 14, for £200 to Agnew’s (no.6969), from whom on 4 December 1952 it was bought for £240 by the present owner, the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford (P96).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Higgins Bedford, Bedford, 4 December 1952, GBP 240, P96
- Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 30 July 1952, GBP 200, no.6969
- Sotheby's, London, London, 30 July 1952, lot 14
- Katharine Iris Paull, Chichester
- [?] Arthur Harington Champernowne (1768 - 1819), 1799
- Exhibition History
- English Watercolours from the Hickman Bacon and other Collections, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, 1952, no. 70
- English Watercolours, 1750-1850, Norwich Castle Museum, 1955, no. 16
- Watercolours and Drawings from the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, Thomas Agnew & Sons, 1962, no. 14
- Primitives to Picasso, Royal Academy, 1962, no. 362
- Watercolours from Bedford, Castle Museum, 1965, no. 56
- English Watercolours from the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Reading Museum and Art Gallery, 1965, no. 53
- Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections, Royal Academy, 1998, no. 212
- Bibliography
- Adrian Bury, The Cecil Higgins Museum Bedford, ed. Adrian Bury: London, 1961, p. 35
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 103, 138
- Evelyn Joll, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery Watercolours and Drawings, Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery: Bedford, 2002, p. 264
Revisions & Feedback
The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.
Please help us to improve this catalogue
If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.
Comment
This is a copy of FT193 but with colouring and weak pen line that begin to betray its late date. Nonetheless the closeness to the original—the retention, for instance, of penlines—is notable. John “Warwick” Smith made a very similar view that was engraved for his publication, Select Views.
This is one of several Towne drawings that were sold by the Champernowne family early in the twentieth century.