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Lot Essay
Charles Towne was born at Wigan, Lancashire. His artistic temperament is said to have first expressed itself in sketches that he made using old pieces of chalk on the tombstones in Wigan churchyard, before he was eight years old.
Towne moved to Liverpool where he found employment with John Rathbone painting ornaments on buckram cases, but also learning something of landscape painting. He later moved to Bolton-le-Moors, Lancaster and Manchester, working as a decorative painter and sometimes copyist, before returning to Liverpool as a japanner, all the while pursuing his ambition to become an independent painter of animals and landscapes. He first exhibited at a show arranged by the Society for Promoting the Arts of Painting and Design, the forerunner of the Liverpool Academy, in 1786.
In 1796, Towne travelled to London, where he appears to have remained for some years, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and befriending fellow artists such as George Morland (1763-1804) and Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812), whose work influenced his own.
This painting was executed after Towne's return to Liverpool in c.1810, when he became not only a member of the Liverpool Academy, but its Vice-President (1812-1813).
Towne moved to Liverpool where he found employment with John Rathbone painting ornaments on buckram cases, but also learning something of landscape painting. He later moved to Bolton-le-Moors, Lancaster and Manchester, working as a decorative painter and sometimes copyist, before returning to Liverpool as a japanner, all the while pursuing his ambition to become an independent painter of animals and landscapes. He first exhibited at a show arranged by the Society for Promoting the Arts of Painting and Design, the forerunner of the Liverpool Academy, in 1786.
In 1796, Towne travelled to London, where he appears to have remained for some years, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and befriending fellow artists such as George Morland (1763-1804) and Philip Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812), whose work influenced his own.
This painting was executed after Towne's return to Liverpool in c.1810, when he became not only a member of the Liverpool Academy, but its Vice-President (1812-1813).