- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Looking towards Newton
- Date
- ca. 1778 - 1780
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey and black inks, grey wash
- Dimensions
-
- image width 354mm,
- image length 570mm
- Support
- laid paper with watermark "I VILLEDARY" with fleur de lis design, the paper has a vertical crease down its centre, and a horizontal crease along its length, roughly 120mm from the top edge
- Inscription
-
- verso
- "Looking towards Newton / Painted a Picture for Thomas Taylor of Denbury / 1780"
- Object Type
- Monochrome wash
-
- Collection
- Versions
- Looking towards Newton
- Catalogue Number
- FT155
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the object
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 granddaughters Maria Sophia Merivale (1853–1928) and Judith Ann Merivale (1860–1945), both of Oxford, inherited the drawing in May 1915 (BP179). On 12 April 1946 Judith Merivale’s executors sold the drawing to Agnew’s (no.4550) and on 18 January 1949 it was sold for £36 15s. to Sir Robert Clermont Witt (1872–1952), who bequeathed it to its present owner, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London (D.1952.RW.4064).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Thomas Agnew & Sons
- Courtauld Gallery, London
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844)
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945)
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928)
- James White (1744 - 1825)
- Sir Robert Clermont Witt
- Exhibition History
- 74th Annual Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings, Thomas Agnew & Sons, 1947, no. 147
- 76th Annual Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings, Thomas Agnew & Sons, 1949, no. 79
- Three Exeter Artists of the Eighteenth Century: Francis Hayman RA, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 1951, no. 59
- Bibliography
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 101
Other entries in West Country Sketches, 1772–80
A View of Exeter, taken between Exwick and Cowley Bridge
A View of Berry Pomeroy Castle within the Gateway
A View going up from the Lake in Peamore Park
A View from the Hill above the Lake at Peamore
A View near Exwell, looking towards Topsham
A View of the Waterfall at Lidford in the County of Devon
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Comment
This drawing dates from the very late 1770s or 1780 and is similar in style to preparatory drawings of that period made for Lord Courtenay. It is a study for an oil painting dated 1780 (FT156). The paper and its creases are similar to FT136. It is typical of drawings Towne made in the late 1770s in preparation for finished paintings or watercolours, which were in contrast to the briefer studies he used earlier in the decade (such as FT021, FT022).