- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View in the Road near Llangollen
- Banks of the Dee
- Date
- 1777/07/17
- Medium
- Pen and ink, grey and blue washes
- Dimensions
-
- image width 241mm,
- image length 305mm
- Inscription
-
- sheet, verso
- “No38 July 17th 1777 / A View on the Road / Drawn on the spot by Francis Towne” and in pencil, “near Llangollen”
- Object Type
- Monochrome wash
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT100
- Description Sources
- Paul Oppé records; Bonham’s website (accessed 15 June 2015)
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 granddaughters Maria Sophia Merivale (1853–1928) and Judith Ann Merivale (1860–1945), both of Oxford, inherited the drawing in May 1915 (BP120) and they gave it in 1927 to Nina and Anna Nevins (Anna Nevins of Shaw Farm, Waterford, Connecticut, died unmarried in 1959; her sister was Marian Nevins McDowell [1856/1857–1956]; Anna Nevins’s heir, Lucretia Bingham, inherited no drawings by Towne; the Barton Place catalogue suggests that the Nevinses possessed one further, unidentified work, framed, although possibly this is a reference to the Llangollen sketch). It is untraced from that point until being offered for sale at Bonham’s in Los Angeles, USA, as the property of a private collection in Virginia, USA, on 29 June 2015, lot 7144.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Private Collection, 29 June 2015
- Bonham's, Los Angeles, California, 29 June 2015, lot 7144
- Private Collection, Virginia, USA
- Nina Nevins, Waterford, Connecticut, 1927
- Anna Nevins (? - 1959), Waterford, Connecticut, 1927
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945), Oxford, May 1915, BP120
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928), Oxford, May 1915, BP120
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
- Exhibition History
- [?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 27, 28, 29 or 43 as 'Banks of the Dee'
- Bibliography
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 108
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
Footnotes
- 1 Paul Oppé records: notes, ca. 1915.
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Comment
Paul Oppé’s note reads: “120. 38. near Llangollen. July 17 1777 a view in the Road spot etc[?] nil on front. loosely greyed outlined trees, blue, grey distance with blues. 9½ x 12 [241 x 305 mm].”1 Oppé also remarks that FT101, which features the Castle of Dinas, shows almost the same view as this drawing.