- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View near the Arco Scuro Looking towards the Villa Medici
- Date
- 1785
- Medium
- Pencil (?), pen and grey and brown inks, watercolour
- Dimensions
-
- image width 325mm,
- image length 480mm
- Mount
- formerly mounted by the artist
- Inscription
-
- sheet, recto, lower right
- “Francis Towne delt / 1785”
- Inscription
-
- artist's mount, verso
- “No.2. A View near the Arco Scuro, looking towards / The Villa Medici, at Rome / Drawn / by / Francis Towne / 1785”
- now detached from the drawing
- Object Type
- Watercolour
-
- Collection
-
- (2010.439)
- Versions
- Near the Arco Oscuro
- Catalogue Number
- FT425
- Description Sources
- Examination; Sotheby's records (image)
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Thomas Snow of Cleve (1748–1832), but perhaps by Ann Fortescue, née Sanders (1755–1815), of Buckland House. Thereafter untraced until its sale by Mrs J. Leahy at Sotheby’s on 20 April 1972, lot 31, for £1,700 to Agnew’s (no.1201), who bought it on behalf of a client. It was sold again at Sotheby’s on 12 March 1987, lot 80, for £30,000. In 1998 it was in a “collection particuliere”, presumably the collection of Ian Craft, who offered it for sale at Sotheby’s on 14 July 2010, where it was bought by Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel of Munich, from whom it was purchased in 2010 by the current owner, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2010.439).
- Associated People & Organisations
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, 2010.439
- Katrin Bellinger, Munich, 14 July 2010
- Sotheby's, London, London, 14 July 2010
- Ian Craft
- Private Collection, 12 March 1987, GBP 30000
- Sotheby's, London, London, 12 March 1987, lot 80
- Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, 20 April 1972, GBP 1700, no.1201
- Sotheby's, London, London, 20 April 1972, lot 31
- Mrs J. Leahy
- Ann Fortescue (née Sanders) (1755 - 1815), Beaworthy, January 1786
- Bibliography
- Gerald Bauer, Le Siecle d'Or de L'Aquarelle Anglaise, Biblioth: Paris, 1998, p. 45
Other entries in Studio Watercolours, 1783–1800
Much Wenlock, Shropshire, with the Ruins of the Priory Church
The Wrekin, on the Road between Much Wenlock and Shrewsbury
A View going from the Head of Lake Como over Mount Splugen
The Campagna near Rome looking towards the Sabine Mountains
A View of Loreto with Part of the Adriatic Sea
A View near the Arco Scuro Looking towards the Villa Medici
An Evening View from Mount Palatine looking towards Mount Aventine
A View on the Banks of the Tiber near Monte Milvio
A View of the Temple of Venus looking towards the Island of Nisida
Chateau de Glerolles, near Vevey on Lake Geneva
Abbey Valley Crucis, near Llangollen on the River Dee, North Wales
A View on the Banks of the Dee above Llangollen
A View of the Bay of Naples with the Island of Capri
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Comment
This is a version of a sketch Towne had made in Rome in November 1780 (FT185).
Much of the drawing has no pen and ink, befitting its status as a finished watercolour made on commission. Towne’s colouring is also schematic, typical of his commissioned works of the mid-1780s, especially in the use of brown (for comparison, see FT535, FT536).