This composition has close similarities with a drawing by William Pars formerly in the collection of Dr John Percy (1817–1889) and now in Bradford Art Gallery. According to Andrew Wilton (who did not link the Bradford drawing with Dr Percy’s), Pars’s drawing of Martigny dates from ca. 1770. If this is so, Towne surely knew it himself, before he himself visited the Rhone valley. The etching differs in certain areas from Pars’s drawing (for instance the trunk of the tree in the left foreground divides in two in Towne’s version but is a single cylinder in Pars’s; the sky is not reproduced exactly). Towne may well have owned the drawing since the 1770s, of course; equally, throughout his life he appears to have remained in touch with Pars’s family and may have had access to it later.

Given the date on this etching, it is surely a version of Towne’s Royal Academy exhibit of 1789 (FT557). The inventory of Towne’s effects made at his death lists an impression of this print: “An engraving on copper – from the original Painting by Mr Towne – The Ruins of La Bathia, near Martigny.”¹