This is a view of Cowley Place, a suburban villa designed in 1788–1790 by Towne’s friend William Jackson (1730–1803) for his son William Collins Jackson. Jackson sketched the grounds at Cowley in a letter dated 1 August 1788.¹ In 1790 William Collins Jackson married Frances Baring (b.1769), a daughter of Charles Baring (see FT350). John White Abbott was one of Jackon’s friends and drew his portrait in 1822.² 

This drawing is currently attributed to Francis Towne by the museum, although it must be the work of a pupil. Perhaps it was drawn by one of the Merivale family of Barton Place, which was just to the right of the picture. The path in the right foreground of the picture leads to Barton Place and its adjoining farm. The inhabitants of Cowley, including of Barton Place, Cowley Place, and Cowley Cottage, formed a neighbourly community in the early 1800s, evident in the letters of the Gibbs family of Cowley Cottage now at the Guildhall Library in London and in transcripts of Merivale family letters at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere. Frances Baring’s sister lived at nearby Pynes after her marriage in 1791 to Sir Stafford Northcote.

The museum dates this sketch to ca. 1812. However, it seems that as Cowley Bridge was rebuilt after damage in 1809, the sketch must be somewhat earlier.