drawing;
album
- Museum number
- Nn,2.25
- Description
-
Entrance to the Villa Ludovisi, formerly part of an album; walled road to left flanked by tall trees on r, figure in right foreground leaning against entrance. 1780
Pen and black ink, grey wash and watercolour
- Production date
- 1780
- Dimensions
-
Height: 464 millimetres
-
Width: 321 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- From album NN.02.1-32
See Nn,1.1 for information about the Towne albums as a whole.
Stainton 1985
Towne's developing interest in unconventional spatial juxtapositions is well illustrated in this drawing: few other eighteenth-century artists would have conceived such an idiosyncratic composition, dominated as it is by an enormous expanse of sky against which a group of cypress trees is silhouetted. Towne must have calculated the design with care - the tallest cypress is placed at the exact centre of the paper, and it is apparent that his concern was above all with the pattern he was making.
This watercolour seems to have been among those included by Towne in the exhibition he organised of his work in 1805. He never became a member of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, who, coincidentally, were to hold their first exhibition later in the same year; no greater contrast can be imagined than that between Towne's refined patterns and the richly coloured, ornately framed works exhibited by members of the new Society. Lack of appreciation from his contemporaries - he was also an unsuccessful candidate for election as an Associate of the Royal Academy on several occasions - seems to have embittered Towne, who in his lifetime enjoyed only a local reputation as a drawing master in and around Exeter.
The following label was written by Richard Stephens for the Towne exhibition in 2016:
During his studies in Italy, Towne's compositional ideas sometimes evolved over several drawings. An idea used on one occasion was developed further in another work made shortly afterwards. With its dominant central tree set against a foreground of garden walls, this striking watercolour may be compared with the Arco Oscuro watercolour to your left (Nn,2.23) that Towne had made ten days earlier, on 29 November, which itself features a large pine tree at its centre.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1985, BM, 'British Landscape Watercolours', no.34
1993 Jan-Apr, London, Royal Academy, 'British Watercolours', no. 268
2001 Sep-Dec, Mantua, Palazzo Te, 'Un paese incantato', no.15
2016, Jan-Aug, BM, 'Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne's watercolours of Rome' (no catalogue)
- Condition
- Laid down in original wash lined mount.
- Acquisition date
- 1816
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Nn,2.25
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: 1972,U.731
