- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Inside the Colosseum
- Date
- 1780/10/16
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 319mm,
- image length 473mm
- Support
- laid paper
- Mount
- mounted by the artist on paper watermarked “J WHATMAN”
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto
- lower left “F.Towne delt / Rome.1780. No.1”
- in brown ink
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No.1 / Inside the Coloseo [“Octr 16 - 1780” scratched out] from 11 till 3 O Clock / Rome Francis Towne. delt.”
- in brown ink
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (Nn,2.11)
- Catalogue Number
- FT171
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the object
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825) and given by him in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.2.11).
- 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. 164, 165, 166, 167, or 168 as 'Inside of the Coliseo; this edifice is of Travertina stone'; or 169 or 171 as 'Inside of the Coliseo'
- unidentified exhibition, British Museum, 1981
- Francis Towne, Tate Gallery; Leeds City Art Gallery, 24 June 1997 - 4 January 1998, no. 16
- 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. 199
- Adrian Bury, 'Some Italian Views by Francis Towne', The Connoisseur, No. VLCII: London, 1938, p. 12
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 31, 73, 124
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 109
The recto inscription of Towne’s drawing is cut off towards the bottom, where the paper was itself cut in preparation for mounting. This suggests that the inscription was made before mounting was considered.
Footnotes
- 1 Louis Chaix, Colosseum, 1770s (Cailleux 1991).
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