- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View by Moonlight
- Date
- No date
- Medium
- Pen and grey ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 159mm,
- image length 197mm
- Support
- on paper watermarked with an ornamented fleur-de-lis and a Whatman cypher
- Mount
- mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower right
- “F.Towne. / delt 1792”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “a View by Moonlight / in the Bunhay at Exeter / Francis Towne delt”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (T08572)
- Catalogue Number
- FT571
- Description Sources
- Examination; Bower 1998; Museum records (image)
Provenance
Untraced until bought by Paul Oppé (1878–1957; no.507) at Foster’s on 9 March 1916 and sold by his descendants in 1996 with the rest of Oppé’s collection to the present owner, the Tate Gallery (T08572).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Tate, London, 1996, T08572
- Adolph Paul Oppé (1878 - 1957), 9 March 1916, no.507
- Foster's auctioneers (1883 - 1940), 27 July 1910
Sold as a group with FT228, FT257, FT283, FT284, FT296, FT310, FT318, FT319, FT325, FT326, FT327, FT329, FT330, FT339, FT340, FT361, FT793 and a drawing by an unidentified pupil.
- Bibliography
- Peter Bower, 'Drawing Paper in the 18th and 19th centuries: Papers from the Opp_ Collection, part 2', The Quarterly Journal of the British Association of Paper Historians: [?] London, 1998, p. 19
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 146
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 125
- Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, Tate Publishing: London, 1997, p. 128
Other entries in Exeter and the Exe, 1791–99
Francis Towne
Scene in the City of Exeter between the Quaygate and Westgate
Scene in the City of Exeter between the Quaygate and Westgate
Francis Towne
A Lane in the Village of Heavitree, near Exeter
A Lane in the Village of Heavitree, near Exeter
Footnotes
- 1 Oppé 1920, p.125.
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Comment
The Bonhay was an area on the southern edge of Exeter near the new bridge. Oppé considered this an “unusual attempt for water-colour . . . naif in parts but remarkable for the dryness with which the darkness is treated and some success in the representation of moonlight on the water”.1