- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- View from Powis Castle towards Welshpool
- Date
- ca. 1777 - 1815
- Medium
- Pen and ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 108mm,
- image length 184mm
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower right
- “F.Towne / delt”
- Inscription
-
- sheet, verso
- “View from Powis Castle towards Welshpool”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT106
- Description Sources
- Paul Oppé records; Agnew’s records (image)
Provenance
Probably 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 granddaughters Maria Sophia Merivale (1853–1928) and Judith Ann Merivale (1860–1945), both of Oxford, inherited the drawing in May 1915 (BP127) and gave it to their nephew Herman Walter Merivale (b.1898) in 1924. He was probably the father of Dr Walter Herman Hodgson Merivale (ca. 1918–1971), who sold it on 21 October 1966 to Agnew’s (no.6500) for £900 with FT236. On 23 January 1967 Agnew’s sold it to a private collector, whereafter it is untraced.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Untraced
- Private Collection, 23 January 1967
- Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 21 October 1966, GBP 900, no.6500
Acquired with FT236 - Dr Walter Herman Hodgson Merivale (ca. 1918 - 1971)
- Herman Walter Merivale (1898), 1924
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945), Oxford, May 1915, BP127
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928), Oxford, May 1915, BP127
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
- Exhibition History
- 94th Annual Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings, Thomas Agnew & Sons, 1967, no. 47 as 'View from Powis Castle towards Welshpool'
- Bibliography
- Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, A Tour Through Monmouthshire and Wales Made in the Months of June and July 1774 and in the months of June, July and August 1777: Salisbury, 1781, p. 189
Other entries in Tour of Wales, 1777
View of a Mountain, Perhaps near Aberddwlas
A View near Dolgelly with Part of Cader Idris
A View of the Salmon Leap from Pont Aberglaslyn
The West Front of Tintern Abbey
Chepstow Chepstow Museum and Art Gallery
The Ruins of the Great Room in Ludlow Castle, Shopshire, where Milton’s Comus was Performed
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Comment
Powis Castle is just outside Welshpool, about eighteen miles west of Shrewsbury.
Paul Oppé’s note of this work reads: “127BP Welshpool. F Towne delt 4½ x 7¼ [114 x 184 mm] Framed. Very small, brushed in strokes, blue green & yellow. Almost certainly later colour, monochrome[?] lakes[?], hatched tree.”2 The drawing described by Paul Oppé is identified with the one sold at Agnew’s in 1967 on the grounds that both share an unusually small size and both depict Welshpool. The Agnew’s drawing also features a hatched tree. Although the drawing is here catalogued alongside works from the 1777 tour of Wales, its date is somewhat doubtful: Oppé observed that the colouring was a late addition, and the paper’s size is the same as the sheets of Towne’s 1812–1815 sketchbook (FT733 to FT751). On the other hand, the pen work is nothing like the 1812–15 work and is consistent with a date in the 1770s.