Description
Creator
Francis Towne (1739 - 1816)
Title(s)
  • The Palatine Hill
  • The Palatine Hill looking towards the Baths of Caracalla
  • On the Palatine Mount
Date
1781/01/03
Medium
Pencil, watercolour
Dimensions
  • image width 319mm,
  • image length 473mm
Support
laid paper with a watermark with a design of a fleur de lis within a coronet
Mount
mounted by the artist
Inscription
  • sheet, recto, lower right
  • “F.Towne / Rome. No.24”
  • in brown ink
Inscription
  • artist's mount, verso
  • “No.22 / Palatine Mount looking towards the Baths of Caracalla Janry 3d 1781 [over scratched-out “Janry 30th 1781”] from 9 till 12 O Clock / Rome Francis Towne delt / N.B. Mrs. J.Fortescue had a Copy of this [“Janry 20th. 1786.” scratched out] sent to her at Buckland House / Devonshire”
  • in brown ink
Object Type
Watercolour

Collection
Catalogue Number
FT194
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.2.29).

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. 174, 175, 176, 177 or 178 as 'On the Palatine Mount'
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. 200
Adrian Bury, Francis Towne - Lone Star of Water-Colour Painting, Charles Skilton: London, 1962, pp. 76, 125
Martin Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, ed. Dudley Snelgrove, London: B. T. Batsford, 1966, p. 122

Comment

The copy for Mrs Fortescue is not known.

by Richard Stephens

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