- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Coming down from Capodimonte
- Date
- 1781/03/20
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour, gum
- Dimensions
-
- image width 323mm,
- image length 468mm
- Mount
- mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “No7 / F.Towne. delt. 1781”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “Naples / No7 Coming down from Capa de Monta / drawn on the spot Francis Towne / March No7. 1781 [the date over scratched-out “March 20th 1781”]”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (Nn,3.12)
- Versions
- Coming down from Capodimonte
- Catalogue Number
- FT234
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the object
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), who gave it in 1818 to the present owner, the British Museum (Nn.3.1).
- 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. 188 as 'Coming down from Capo di Monte, at Naples'
- unidentified exhibition, British Museum, 1981
- In the Shadow of Vesuvius, Accademia Italiana, London, 1990
- Thomas Jones (1742-1803): An Artist Rediscovered, National Museum & Gallery, 2003, no. 93
- 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. 202
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 126-127
Other entries in Naples, March 1781
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.
Comment
Capodimonte was a hill on the outskirts of Naples that offered good views of the city and bay. It was also the district where the Neapolitan royal gallery that housed the royal collection was located. William Pars lodged in a house at Capodimonte during both of his visits to Naples.
As with FT231, Towne worked on this drawing long after 1781, chiefly to reinforce its shaded areas. He also made another version of the drawing, probably in the mid-1780s (FT418).
According to Thomas Jones’s notebook and memoir, he and Towne visited Baia on 20 March 1781 but were accosted by soldiers at an inn. The two artists retreated to Pozzuoli. Paul Oppé noted that a drawing of Capri “and its companion ‘Pozzuoli’” were sold at Sotheby’s in 1937. Although it seems that two commissioned works by Towne dating 1784 were sold then, other evidence puts Oppé’s identification of the subjects in doubt (see the Comment at FT416).