Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • The Frascati Hills
Date
1781
Medium
Pencil, pen and brown ink, watercolour with gum
Dimensions
  • image width 206mm,
  • image length 270mm
Mount
mounted by the artist
Inscription
  • recto, lower right
  • “F.Towne delt. / Rome. 1781”
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “No.39. Frescati Hills. / Francis Towne. delt / 1781 [the year in dark brown ink over scratched-out “1781”]”
Object Type
Watercolour

Collection
Catalogue Number
FT209
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.1.12).

Associated People & Organisations

British Museum
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. 143 as 'Frescati Hills'
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. 126

Comment

This drawing appears to feature in the mid-distance the Tomb of the Plautii (FT251) on the Via Tiburtina. Towne has given prominence to the rocks adjacent to the road, which were famously quarried by the ancient Romans.

by Richard Stephens

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