- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- Rhaeadr Ddu
- Rhaidar Dû
- Date
- 1777
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 340mm,
- image length 505mm
- Support
- four sheets of laid paper, the largest of which (bottom left) has horizontal and vertical creases and an indistinct watermark including a coronet, the second largest (top right) has a vertical creasethe draiwng is mounted by the artist on laid paper
- Mount
- mounted by the artist on laid paper
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “F.Towne / delt 1777 No.16”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No.16 / Rhiaddr du North Wales / drawn on the spot by / Francis Towne July 5. 1777 / Mounted Octr 21st 1801.”
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT082
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the work
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 (BP107). Judith Merivale sold it to Squire Gallery in August 1936 for £23 2s., from whom presumably it was bought by the Fine Art Society, as it was on sale there from 1937 to 2 January 1943, when it was sold to Sir Esmond Otho Durlacher (1901–1982) for £195 with six other works. It was sold at Sotheby’s on 20 February 1946, lot 80, for £40 to Colnaghi (no.A13492), who sold it on 8 May 1946 to Sir Bruce Sterling Ingram (1877–1963) for £55. Wilcox noted it in the “Ingram family Collection” in 1997 and it was sold by the estate of Michael Ingram (1917/1918–2005), Bruce Ingram’s nephew, at Sotheby’s on 8 December 2005, lot 142, for £34,000 including fees.
- Associated People & Organisations
- P&D Colnaghi & Co, London
- Sir Esmond Otho Durlacher
- The Fine Art Society, London
- Sir Bruce Stirling Ingram (1877 - 1963)
- Michael Ingram
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844)
- Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945)
- Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928)
- Sotheby's, London
- Squire Gallery
- Untraced
- 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. 45 as Rhaidar Dû
- Exhibition of Early English Water-Colour Drawings, Fine Art Society, 1937, no. 39
- Exhibition of Early English Water-Colour Drawings, Fine Art Society, 1937, no. 3
- Exhibition of Early English Watercolours, Fine Art Society, 1938, no. 99
- Summer Exhibition of Early English Watercolours, Fine Art Society, 1938, no. 4
- Exhibition of Early English Watercolours, Fine Art Society, 1939, no. 67
- [?] Exhibition of Early English Watercolours, Fine Art Society, 1941
- Exhibition of Watercolours: Drawings and Oils by Early English Artists, Fine Art Society, 1942, no. 46
- Exhibition of Watercolours: Drawings and Oils by Early English Artists, Fine Art Society, 1942, no. 102
- Exhibition of Watercolours: Drawings and Oils by Early English Artists, Fine Art Society, 1943, no. 36
- Three Exeter Artists of the Eighteenth Century: Francis Hayman RA, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 1951, no. 76
- A Loan Exhibition from the Collection of Sir Bruce S.Ingram O.B.E. M.C., Colnaghi, 1952, no. 79
- Watercolour Drawings of Three Centuries from the Collection of Sir Bruce and Lady Ingram, Colnaghi, 1956, no. 13
- Bibliography
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 95, 144
- H. J. Paris, English Watercolour Painters, Collins: London, 1945, p. x
- Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, Tate Publishing: London, 1997, pp. 43, 136
- Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, A Tour Through Monmouthshire and Wales Made in the Months of June and July 1774 and in the months of June, July and August 1777: Salisbury, 1781, p. 116
Other entries in Tour of Wales, 1777
View of a Mountain, Perhaps near Aberddwlas
A View near Dolgelly with Part of Cader Idris
A View of the Salmon Leap from Pont Aberglaslyn
The West Front of Tintern Abbey
Chepstow Chepstow Museum and Art Gallery
The Ruins of the Great Room in Ludlow Castle, Shopshire, where Milton’s Comus was Performed
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Comment
Rhaeadr Ddu was one of the best-known waterfalls of the North Wales tour, its reputation consolidated by Paul Sandby’s aquatint of 1777, which shares Towne’s viewpoint.
Figure 1.
Paul Sandby, Rhaeadr Ddu, 1777
Digital image courtesy of National Library of Wales, P03696
Wyndham also recorded a visit:
As Towne’s inscription states, the drawing was mounted many years after his visit to Wales. Parts of the right and foreground of the drawing also appear to have been worked on in ca. 1800. The channel of water in the right corner, the central rock, and the yellow tree at the water’s bank all have neat hatchings typical of Towne’s finished work of the late 1790s and 1800s. Towne may also have added in the rocks sitting in water in the right mid-ground, and the right portion of the sky has a grey moodiness not unlike other works to which Towne returned many years after beginning them (FT051, FT252, FT253).
This drawing may well be the “excellent and typical Welsh waterfall, by Francis Towne”, noted by a reviewer of the autumn 1941 Fine Art Society exhibition of English drawings,2 although no reference in their catalogues to such an exhibit can be found.