Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • At Tivoli
  • In a Wood of Olives at Tivoli
Date
1781
Medium
Pencil, pen and grey ink, grey and blue washes
Dimensions
  • image width 380mm,
  • image length 500mm
Support
wove paper
Mount
mounted by the artist
Inscription
  • sheet, recto, lower right
  • “No17 / Francis Towne delt 1781”
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “At Tivoli / No17. / Drawn on the Spot / by / Francis Towne / 1781”
Object Type
Monochrome wash

Catalogue Number
FT259
Description Sources
Examination; Sotheby's records (image)

Provenance

Sold by descendants of John White Abbott at Sotheby’s on 10 April 1997, lot 40, whereafter it is untraced.

Associated People & Organisations

Untraced
Sotheby's, London, London, 10 April 1997
lot 40
John White Abbott (1763 - 1851)
Exhibition History
[?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 149 as 'In a Wood of Olives at Tivoli'
Three Exeter Artists of the Eighteenth Century: Francis Hayman RA, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 1951, no. 87
Bibliography
Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 77
Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 151
Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, Tate Publishing: London, 1997, p. 74

Comment

This is possibly the same tree that Towne depicts in FT257. John White Abbott made a copy of part of this drawing (FT819). It is interesting that Towne mounted this overwhelmingly monochrome drawing. Either he considered it sufficiently resolved as a tonal study or his plans to colour it were never executed.

by Richard Stephens

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