- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- From the Palatine Hill
- Date
- 1780/11/20
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 317mm,
- image length 472mm
- Support
- laid paper with a fleur de lis watermark and a vertical crease down its centre
- Mount
- mounted by the artist on paper watermarked "J WHATMAN"
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne. delt. Rome / Novr 20. 1780. No.13.”
- in black ink
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No.13. / From Mount Palatine. from 12 O Clock till 2. / Rome. Francis Towne. delt. 1781”
- the year inscribed in dark brown ink, the rest in brown ink
- Inscription
-
- verso
- indistinct
- in brown ink
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (Nn,2.19)
- Catalogue Number
- FT183
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the object
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White (1744–1825) of Exeter, who gave it in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.2.19).
- 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. 173 as 'From the Palatine Mount'
- unidentified exhibition, British Museum, 1981
- British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860 at the British Museum, British Museum, 1985, no. 32
- 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. 200
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 124
- Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, Tate Publishing: London, 1997, p. 56
- Andrew Wilton and Annie Lyles, The Great Age of British Watercolours, Royal Academy of Arts: London, 1993, fig. 21
Other entries in Rome Series, October 1780–July 1781
Francis Towne
Two Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia
Two Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia
Francis Towne
Part of the Ancient Roman Wall between Porta Salara and Porta Pinciana
Part of the Ancient Roman Wall between Porta Salara and Porta Pinciana
Francis Towne
Two Miles from Rome, going out at Porta Salara
Two Miles from Rome, going out at Porta Salara
Francis Towne
Near the Arco Scuro, looking into the Villa Borghese
Near the Arco Scuro, looking into the Villa Borghese
Francis Towne
A Sepulchre by the Road between Rome and the Ponte Nomentana
A Sepulchre by the Road between Rome and the Ponte Nomentana
Francis Towne
The Old Wall of Rome at the back of the Villa Medici
The Old Wall of Rome at the back of the Villa Medici
Francis Towne
St Maria Nuova with the Temple of Venus and Rome
St Maria Nuova with the Temple of Venus and Rome
Francis Towne
The Temple of Vesta and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis
The Temple of Vesta and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis
Francis Towne
Going out from the Porta Pia, looking towards the Sabine Mountains
Going out from the Porta Pia, looking towards the Sabine Mountains
Footnotes
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Comment
This is the Church of SS Giovanni and Paolo adjacent to the Palatine Hill. On the left are the Colosseum and the Claudian Aqueduct (FT199) and on the far right is the Piazza S. Gregorio and buildings associated with the Church of S. Gregorio. Towne made the view halfway up the Palatine Hill on or adjacent to the gardens of the English College, whose wall appears in the far-right corner. The path running alongside the college, which led from the Via di S. Gregorio to the Church and Convent of S. Bonaventura (the church featured in FT182), is prominent in the foreground. The right half of a sketch that Thomas Jones drew in “the garden of the English college” shows a very similar scene to the far-left portion of Towne’s work here.1
The Church of SS Giovanni and Paolo was in the centre of the historic area of Rome most picked over by eighteenth-century visitors. It was therefore a popular subject, with versions surviving by John “Warwick” Smith (British Museum) and Nicolas-Didier Boguet.2