Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • The Old Schools, Radcliffe Camera, and the Entrance to Trinity College Gardens
Date
1813/09/25
Medium
Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour
Dimensions
  • image height 175mm,
  • image width 319mm
Support
two sheets
Inscription
  • sheet, verso
  • “The School, Radcliffe Library and entrance into Trinity College Gardens, August 25. 1813”
Part of
  • 1813 Sketchbook
Object Type
Watercolour

Collection
Catalogue Number
FT754
Description Sources
Examination; Agnew's records; Museum records (image)

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 (1745–1844) 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 as part of a sketchbook containing FT752 to FT764, which they sold in 1927 to Walker’s Galleries for £60. In 1928 Augustus Walker (1866/1867–1965) gave it to the current owner, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (DBB.1828).

Associated People & Organisations

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1928, DBB.1828
Augustus Walker (1866/67 - 1965), 1928
Walker's Galleries, London, 1927, GBP 60
Within a sketchbook containing FT752 to FT764.
Judith Ann Merivale (1860 - 1945), Oxford, May 1915
Maria Sophia Merivale (1853 - 1928), Oxford, May 1915
John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
Exhibition History
24th Annual Exhibition of Early English Watercolours, Walker's Galleries, 1928, no. 77
Francis Towne, Tate Gallery; Leeds City Art Gallery, 24 June 1997 - 4 January 1998, no. 71
Bibliography
David Blaney Brown, Ashmolean Museum Catalogue of Drawings Vol 4: Earlier English Drawings, Clarendon: Oxford, 1982, p. 631
Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 130

Comment

The view is on the Parks Road looking south to Radcliffe Square with Trinity College on the right. 

The drawing is stuck down onto a modern mount, hiding the verso inscription, which has been taken from a 1953 letter from Walker’s Galleries in the Agnew’s archive.

by Richard Stephens

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