- Description
-
- Creator
- Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
- Title(s)
-
- A View near Vicavasso, of Part of the Convent of St Cosimato, with the Modern Bridge on the Anio, and Part of the Claudian Aqueduct
- Date
- No date
- Medium
- Oil (?)on canvas
- Dimensions
-
- image width 1295mm,
- image length 1676mm
- Object Type
- Oil painting
-
- Catalogue Number
- FT650
- Description Sources
- Paul Oppé notes; Oppé 1920
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 (1779–1844) and his successors. Merivale’s granddaughter, Emily Harriet Buckingham (1853–1923), inherited the painting in 1915, whereafter it is untraced.
- Associated People & Organisations
- Emily Harriet Buckingham (1853 - 1923), 1915
- John Herman Merivale (1779 - 1844), 1825
- James White (1744 - 1825), Exeter, 1816
- Bibliography
- Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, pp. 101-102
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Comment
This picture appeared to Oppé to be based on an engraving of J. P. Hackert’s gouache (figure 1). Emily Buckingham owned Towne’s copy of the engraving, which perhaps he acquired in Italy.
Oppé writes of this picture:
Although he appears to have based this work on the Hackert print, Towne had visited the area himself in 1781 (FT246, FT247, FT248, FT249, FT250). In an unpublished note Oppé suggested that Towne’s work was not so closely based on Hackert: “The oil painting is a variant of Hackert engraving 1780 Convent of S Cosimato He has improved the lighting & giving character & atmosphere to the hills. . . . Also improved compositing bringing rock forward & into shadow, convent to the Right & in light. Reducing bridge & concentrating the hills.”2
Figure 1.
G. Hackert after J. P. Hackert, Convent of San Cosimato, circa 1780
Digital image courtesy of Witt Photographic Library