This is based on a sketch inscribed “Looking towards Newton / Painted a Picture for Thomas Taylor of Denbury / 1780” (FT155).

The picture shows an early-morning view looking east to the River Teign over Newton Abbott, the town in the mid-distance. The viewpoint is near West Ogwell House, a seat of Thomas Taylor (1731–1805) that he rebuilt between 1751 and 1794, and was probably drawn on his land—Taylor owned “the greater part of this parish” of East Ogwell.¹ Taylor also owned Denbury House in the village of Denbury, a little south of this view, to which Towne’s inscription on FT155 refers and which Taylor’s father had rebuilt in the 1730s. However, although Towne’s painting of the Teign river probably describes Taylor’s inherited lands, it is not primarily an assertion of his ownership of the land in the way that Towne’s picture of Haldon (FT154) is primarily a representation of the property of Sir Robert Palk. Although it employs the same precise observation, it is a private, contemplative landscape. The river is not here as a symbol of mercantile or naval power but as a phenomenon of nature, for the view Towne has shown is “Ogwell-hill, near Newton”, which was a local beauty spot.² Polwhele noted the view: “In our way from Newton to East-Ogwell, the vale in which Newton is situated has a pleasing effect, if we look back on the oaken coppice that cloathes a part of it, and the clustering houses that terminate the view.”³