Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • Borrowdale Chapel
Date
1786/08/23
Medium
Pen and ink, watercolour
Dimensions
  • image width 216mm,
  • image length 340mm
Mount
(?)mounted by the artist
Inscription
  • artist's mount, recto
  • “Borrowdale [perhaps “Burrowdale”] Chapel [perhaps “Church”]”
  • and with an erased date and address of Leicester Square, London, 1790; dated 23 August 1786, 4 o’clock in the afternoon; and numbered “7”
Object Type
Watercolour

Catalogue Number
FT513a
Description Sources
Paul Oppé records

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 granddaughter Emily Harriet Buckingham (1853–1923) inherited the drawing in 1915, whereafter it is untraced.

Associated People & Organisations

Untraced
Emily Harriet Buckingham (1853 - 1923), 1915
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. 94 as 'Burrowdale Chapel'

Comment

Borrowdale Chapel, now St Andrew’s Church, is in Stonethwaite.

Oppé saw this among Emily Buckingham’s drawings on 16 July 1915, when he described it thus:

No.7 Borrowdale Chapel Aug 23.1786 sub date 1790 Leicester Sq. London 4 o’clock in afternoon. 8½ x 13⅜ [216 x 340 mm]. Different shape. Not properly a sketch. Chapel & trees with mountain behind. Trees brown & yellow, poorly drawn But excellent compn hill excellent as usual & good cloud. A good outline coloured. Effect of straight brush work is bad.

Elsewhere Oppé refers to the drawing as “Borrowdale Church”.1

This is the only Lake District drawing of its size known to have been numbered—perhaps Oppé was making reference to that with his comment that it was a “different shape”.

by Richard Stephens

Footnotes

  1. 1 Paul Oppé records.

Revisions & Feedback

The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.

Please help us to improve this catalogue


If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.