Lake of Albano

Details

Francis Towne (1739-1816)
Lake of Albano
signed, inscribed and dated and numbered 'No 2 Lake of Albano/Evening sun behind the trees on the left/hand/july the 10th 1781/Francis Towne' and and further inscribed 'A copy of this painted on canvass [sic] the same size for James Curtis Esq. 1784' (on the reverse)
pen and grey ink and brown wash, watermark 'J WHATMAN'
12½ x 18 in. (31.8 x 45.7 cm.)

Provenance

Miss Merivale, Barton Place, no. 23.
with Squire Gallery, London, where purchased by
L.G. Duke, 1934.

Exhibited

Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Three Exeter Artists of the Eighteenth Century, Festival of Britain, 1951, no. 188.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Sale room notice

Please note additional provenance on this lot should read:

Bequeathed by the artist to J.H. Merivale and by descent to Misses M.S. and J.A. Merivale, May 1915
by whom sold to Squire Gallery, 1933
from whom purchased by Leonard Duke, 1934
by whom sold to Nigel Warren, 1955.

Lot Essay

Along with this work, James Curtis also ordered a copy in oils of Towne's most famous watercolour, Ariccia. The Ariccia oil (Private Collection, U.S.A.) is the same size as the watercolour. Lake Albano is an evening view, and Ariccia is inscribed 'morning'. Towne's particular twist on this 18th-century convention of pairs of views with contrasting times of day is that the Evening and Morning are of the same night, the present Lake Albano watercolour is dated 10 July 1781 and the Ariccia view (British Museum, see Wilcox, op. cit., p. 59, fig. 20) is dated 11 July.

We are grateful to Tim Wilcox for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.

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