This is a composition based on the events in Act 1, Scene 3, of Macbeth, where Macbeth and Banquo meet three witches. It was a popular subject for landscape painters of the late eighteenth century who treated it as a sublime landscape with figures, rather than as a dramatic narrative or study in characterisation as, for instance, Henry Fuseli had. Towne’s rearing horse and flag-bearing riders betray a knowledge of the well-known version by Francesco Zuccarelli (1702–1788) exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1767 (now Royal Shakespeare Company), whose engraving William Woolett exhibited in 1770 and 1771. Towne may well also have known the picture by John Wootton (1682–1764; offered at Sotheby’s on 8 December 2011). Notwithstanding the early dates of these models, on stylistic grounds Towne’s drawing probably comes from the 1780s.