On the Banks of the Tiber near Ponte Molle

Description

Creator: Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)

Title(s)

On the Banks of the Tiber near Ponte Molle
Banks of the Tiber, near Ponte Molle

Date: ca. 1780/10

Medium: Pencil, pen and grey ink, watercolour with touches of scratching out

Dimensions

image width 205mm,
image length 402mm

Support: two sheets of laid paper

Mount: mounted by the artist

Inscription

sheet, recto, lower right
“F.Towne / delt. 1780”
in brown ink, gone over in lighter brown ink. This inscription is on the right-hand sheet.

Inscription

sheet, recto, lower centre
“F.Towne.delt / Rome 1780 No4”
in black ink, and cut off at the bottom. This inscription is on the left-hand sheet

Inscription

sheet, verso
indistinct inscription
in brown ink

Inscription

artist's mount, verso
“Rome . No4. / Banks of the Tyber near Ponte Molle / drawn on the Spot by Francis Towne / [“Octr[. . .]” scratched out] 1780[inserted after the scratched-out date] / from 3 till 5 O’Clock afternoon”

Object Type: Watercolour

Collection

(Nn,2.4)

Catalogue Number: FT174

Description Sources: Author's examination of the object

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist in 1816 to James White of Exeter (1744–1825), who gave it in 1816 to the present owner, the British Museum, London (Nn.2.04).

Associated People & Organisations: British Museum; James White (1744 - 1825)

Exhibition History: [?] Exhibition of Original Drawings at the Gallery, No.20 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, 20 Lower Brook Street, 1805, no. 145 as 'On the banks of the Tyber near Ponte Molle'; Light, time, legacy: Francis Towne’s watercolours of Rome, British Museum, 2016

Bibliography: Laurence Binyon, Catalogue of Drawings by British Artists and Artists of Foreign Origin Working in Great Britain Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum: London, 1907, p. 199; Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, p. 123; Paul Oppé, 'Francis Towne, Landscape Painter', The Walpole Society: London, 1920, p. 109

Comment

This is a view of the Chapel of S. Giuliano at Acqua Acetosa in the countryside just to the north of Rome near Ponte Molle. The tower on the far side of the river bank may be the same building depicted in FT173, although it is not wholly clear. Many artists sketched in this area and those who depicted the chapel include Richard Wilson, William Marlow, John Robert Cozens, Pierre-Henri Valenciennes, and in 1783 Nicolas-Didier Boguet.¹

This drawing may well have been inscribed at the same time as FT184 and FT185, as they all share a similar style of black ink recto inscription. The “0” of “1780” in Towne’s mount inscription is very shaky and was perhaps done very late in life when Towne’s handwriting weakened.

Towne’s copy of this drawing, probably made for Thomas Snow of Cleve (1748–1832), is FT431.

**Figure 1.**
Richard Wilson, *The Via Nomentana*, 1754, black and white chalk with stumping on medium, moderately-textured, blue laid paper mounted on medium, moderately-textured, cream wove paper with a border of medium, moderately-textured wove paper with purple wash

Digital image courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.4656

by Richard Stephens

Footnotes

1 Nicolas-Didier Boguet, Chapel of S. Giuliano, 1783 (Hornsby 2002).

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Provenance

Comment

Other entries in Rome Series, October 1780–July 1781

Inside the Colosseum 1780

A View on the Banks of the Tiber 1780