Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • Baths of Titus
Date
1781
Medium
Pencil, watercolour with gum
Dimensions
  • image width 320mm,
  • image length 288mm
Support
vertical crease down right of paper
Mount
mounted on paper watermarked "WHATMAN"
Inscription
  • sheet, recto, lower left
  • “F.Towne / delt 1781 / No.37”
  • in brown ink
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “Rome / No.37 Baths of Titus / Francis Towne [“Janry 1781.” scratched out] /sun of the Right hand”
Object Type
Watercolour

Collection
Catalogue Number
FT207
Description Sources
Examination; Museum records (image)

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), who gave it in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.1.10).

Associated People & Organisations

British Museum
James White (1744 - 1825)
Exhibition History
[?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 183 as 'Ruins of the Baths of Titus'
Light, time, legacy: Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome, British Museum, 2016
Bibliography
Laurence Binyon, Catalogue of Drawings by British Artists and Artists of Foreign Origin Working in Great Britain Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum: London, 1907, p. 201
Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 125
Martin Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, ed. Dudley Snelgrove, London: B. T. Batsford, 1966, p. 121
Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 113

Comment

This is another view of Trajan’s Baths (FT201), known to Towne as the Baths of Titus. This version was heavily worked on late in life.

by Richard Stephens

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