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

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