Two miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia

Description

Creator: Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)

Title(s)

Two Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia
View in the Campagna

Date: 1780/10/26

Medium: Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour

Dimensions

image width 209mm,
image length 417mm

Support: two sheets of laid paper with a watermark of a fleur de lis within a coronet

Mount: mounted by the artist

Inscription

sheet, recto, lower right
“F.Towne delt. / Rome. Octr. 26 1780 No.5”
in black ink

Inscription

artist's mount, verso
“No.5 2 Miles from Rome going out at the Porta Pia / from 10 O Clock till 1 O Clock / Francis Towne delt. / Rome Octr.26 1780 [the date inscribed over the earlier scratched-out “Octr. 26th. 1780.”]”
in black ink

Object Type: Watercolour

Collection

(Nn,2.5)

Catalogue Number: FT175

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.2.05)

Associated People & Organisations: British Museum, London, 1816, Nn.2.05; James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816; 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. 138 as 'Going out of Porta Pia, Rome'; Das Aquarell 1400-1950, Haus der Kunst, 1972, no. 142; 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. 109; Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 123; Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 109; Keith Roberts, 'Review: 1974 exhibition at Kenwood', The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, No. 857, Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd: London, 1974, p. 491

Comment

This drawing depicts the bridge across the Fossa della Ceccina in the countryside north of Rome, with the Sabine mountains in the distance. It closely follows the drawing made by Richard Wilson in the 1750s for the Earl of Dartmouth.¹

The left-hand sheet has no pen and ink, instead only rather free watercolour washes.

Towne made a copy of this drawing, undated but probably of the later 1780s (FT419).

by Richard Stephens

Footnotes

1 Richard Wilson, Via Nomentana, 1750s (Ford 1951).

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Provenance

Comment

Other entries in Rome Series, October 1780–July 1781

Inside the Colosseum 1780

A View on the Banks of the Tiber 1780

On the Banks of the Tiber near Ponte Molle 1780

On the Banks of the Tiber near Ponte Molle 1780