Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • Tivoli
  • Tivoli from below the waterfalls
Date
1781
Medium
Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour with gum
Dimensions
  • image width 249mm,
  • image length 393mm
Mount
mounted by the artist
Inscription
  • sheet, recto, lower left
  • “F.Towne / delt / 1781”
  • the year added later
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “No7 Italy / Tivoli / drawn on the Spot / by / Francis Towne / [date scratched out] 1781”,
  • the year in dark brown ink
Object Type
Watercolour

Collection
Catalogue Number
FT252
Description Sources
Examination; Museum records (image)

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825) and given by him in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum (Nn.2.15).

Associated People & Organisations

British Museum, London, 1816, Nn,2.15
James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
Exhibition History
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. 199
Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 124
Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 112

Comment

This is a distant view of Tivoli made apparently on the Via Tiburtina.

Like FT253 and FT269 this drawing has clearly been very substantially worked on long after 1781 and probably in or after 1794.

by Richard Stephens

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