This is a version of another oil painting (FT142) called in 1974 Looking North from the Lower Slopes of Snowdon. No study for the oils is known, and as the other version is dated 1775, the date of the preparatory sketch must remain in doubt. The two versions are very alike, both in detail and style, although in the 1778 version less of the principal tree trunk is exposed.

Paul Oppé saw the picture at Christie’s in 1953, noting: “Only notable for simple mountain forms in receding distances. Foliage in spots. Very dark brown autumn trees on R. Perhaps the foliage from his 2 Gainsborough oils.”¹ 

The vendor in 1919 was the inheritor from three men, any one of whom may have been Towne’s patron. Sir William Mitford, 5th Bt (1744–1827), was the vendor’s great-grandfather and the originator of Lord Redesdale’s inherited fortune; John Freeman-Mitford (1748–1830), William’s younger brother, was created Baron Redesdale in 1802 and inherited Batsford Park in 1809 from Thomas Edwards-Freeman (ca. 1726–1808). The Mitford brothers seem more likely candidates than John Freeman-Mitford, as both had a significant association with the West Country as MPs from the mid-1780s under the patronage of the Duke of Northumberland, who in 1775 had bought the Werrington Park estate from Sir Humphrey Morice, which Towne knew as early as 1767 (FT008). A 1784 Swiss watercolour also has a Batsford Park provenance (FT417).