- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Landscape Composition
- Date
- ca. 1777 - 1777
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey ink, grey wash
- Object Type
- Monochrome wash
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT786c
Provenance
Untraced apart from its sale at Rosebery’s, London, on 17 March 2011, lot 57.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Untraced
- Rosebery of West Norwood, London, 17 March 2011, lot 57
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
When this drawing was sold in 2011, it was attributed to the manner of John White Abbott. It seems clear, though, that it is the work of Abbott’s master, Francis Towne, and probably dates from the mid-1770s. It has many points of comparison with two imaginary landscapes now at the Ashmolean Museum, both dated 1777, but especially in the loopiness of the pen line describing the trees’ foliage, in the entwined trunks, and the wash shading of the trunks. The shading of the tree at the left edge, topped with a dark canopy of leaves, is somewhat like the larger tree in the 1778 study at Pynes (FT143), and the straggliness of the dark tree in the large 1776 watercolour of Peamore (FT063) is also similar. The tree on the left here can further be compared with the tree on the far bank of the stream in a 1773 study of Canonteign (FT031).
This looks like a drawing that Towne would have made for pupils to copy (other circular compositions are FT792 and FT844).