- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- The Baths of Caracalla
- Date
- 1781/01
- Medium
- Pencil, pen and black ink, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 324mm,
- image length 477mm
- Support
- laid paper, with a vertical crease down its centre
- Mount
- mounted by the artist on wove paper with a light grey line
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower left
- “No32 / Francis Towne / delt 1781”
- in black ink
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “Rome / afternoon light from the right hand / No32 / The Baths of Caracalla / Janry 1781 drawn on / the Spot by Francis Towne”
- in brown ink, in shaky (late) handwriting
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (Nn,1.6)
- Catalogue Number
- FT202
- Description Sources
- Author's examination of the object
Provenance
Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), who gave it in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.1.06).
- Associated People & Organisations
- British Museum
- James White (1744 - 1825)
- Exhibition History
- Francis Towne, Tate Gallery; Leeds City Art Gallery, 24 June 1997 - 4 January 1998, no. 21
- Light, time, legacy: Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome, British Museum, 2016
- Bibliography
- Laurence Binyon, Catalogue of Drawings by British Artists and Artists of Foreign Origin Working in Great Britain Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum: London, 1907, p. 201
- Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 125
- Martin Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, ed. Dudley Snelgrove, London: B. T. Batsford, 1966, p. 120
- Henri Lemaitre, Le Paysage Anglais a l'Aquarelle 1760-1951, Bordas: Paris, 1955, p. 157
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 111
Other entries in Rome Series, October 1780–July 1781
Francis Towne
Two Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia
Two Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia
Francis Towne
Part of the Ancient Roman Wall between Porta Salara and Porta Pinciana
Part of the Ancient Roman Wall between Porta Salara and Porta Pinciana
Francis Towne
Two Miles from Rome, going out at Porta Salara
Two Miles from Rome, going out at Porta Salara
Francis Towne
Near the Arco Scuro, looking into the Villa Borghese
Near the Arco Scuro, looking into the Villa Borghese
Francis Towne
A Sepulchre by the Road between Rome and the Ponte Nomentana
A Sepulchre by the Road between Rome and the Ponte Nomentana
Francis Towne
The Old Wall of Rome at the back of the Villa Medici
The Old Wall of Rome at the back of the Villa Medici
Francis Towne
St Maria Nuova with the Temple of Venus and Rome
St Maria Nuova with the Temple of Venus and Rome
Francis Towne
The Temple of Vesta and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis
The Temple of Vesta and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis
Francis Towne
Going out from the Porta Pia, looking towards the Sabine Mountains
Going out from the Porta Pia, looking towards the Sabine Mountains
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Comment
This is taken from the top of the northern side of the Frigidarium, whose walls Towne must have climbed for the view. It looks down and left into the Natatio (the olympic swimming pool) and beyond, to the Alban Hills south-east of Rome. Interest in the Baths of Caracalla increased in the late 1770s when permission for excavations was granted to Giovanni Volpato. Other artists who drew the site, both in 1780–81, were Louis Ducros and Giovanni Lusieri; John “Warwick” Smith also drew the Baths (British Museum), using the same viewpoint as Towne.
This and the next drawing of Caracalla (FT203) were among the very last of Towne’s drawings of Rome to be mounted; both share the same mounting materials and decoration, which in the case of FT203 is watermarked with the date 1811. Their treatment as a pair, as well as affinities between the images themselves (they share the same viewpoint and describe adjacent parts of the site), suggest that they may well have been conceived as a single panoramic view. However, although it was not unknown for Towne to work during both the morning and afternoon on a single drawing (for example, see FT233), Towne has cast the shadows here in two directions, making it obvious that FT203 was drawn in the morning and FT202 in the afternoon. In so doing he has denied the view the unique source of light that it would have required in order to work as a panoramic view.