- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View of Mendrisio
- A View of Mendrisio Eight Miles from Como
- Date
- ca. 1781/08/24
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and brown ink, grey/brown wash
- Dimensions
-
- image width 284mm,
- image length 463mm
- Support
- paper watermarked with a Strasburg bend and lily and "C&I HONIG"
- Inscription
-
- sheet, verso
- “August the 24th 1781 / Francis Towne / No1 A View of the Lake of Lugano taken from Mendris [above, in pencil: “Mendris”] 8 miles from Como / morning light coming from the right hand”
- in brown ink
- Object Type
- Monochrome wash
-
- Collection
-
- (4471)
- Versions
- Mendrisio, after Francis Towne
- Catalogue Number
- FT343
- Description Sources
- Museum records (image)
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 (BP45). On 31 March 1939 Judith Merivale sold it for £8 to Agnew’s (no.2657), where it was sold on the same day to Paul Oppé on behalf of the present owner, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4471; Oppé 47), for £37 10s. (with two other drawings bought for Ottawa by Paul Oppé).
- Associated People & Organisations
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 31 March 1939, no. 4471
- Adolph Paul Oppé (1878 - 1957), London, 31 March 1939, GBP 37.10, Oppé 47
Acquired on behalf of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa - Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 31 March 1939, GBP 8, no. 2657
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945), Oxford, May 1915, BP45
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928), Oxford, May 1915, BP45
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
- Bibliography
- Paul Oppé, 'Drawings at the National Gallery of Canada', The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs: London, 1941, p. 56
- Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, Tate Publishing: London, 1997, p. 89
Other entries in C&I Honig Series: Northern Italy and Switzerland, August and September 1781
“Lago Torfi”, near Lugano
National Gallery National Gallery of Victoria
Waterfall between Chiavenna and Mount Splugen
In the Valley of the Grisons looking on Tusis
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Comment
Mendrisio, at the foot of Monte Generoso, is a town halfway on the road between Bissone at the south-east end of Lake Lugano and the town of Como.
A copy of this drawing was made by John White Abbott (FT826). John “Warwick” Smith also drew the same subject (Tate).
Towne appears to have inscribed this drawing with the title of FT344 before correcting his mistake—a sign, perhaps, that these were adjacent sheets in a sketchbook at the point the inscriptions were made.