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Borrowdale (formerly 'View near Saddleback')

Maker

(artist)
1739-1816

Title

Date of Production

(circa) 1786

Medium

pen and ink (brown), watercolour with some gum arabic on laid paper, laid down on a mount with wash borders

Dimensions

Height: 9.5 cm
Width: 15.6 cm

Accession Number

D.2007.DS.40

Mode of Acquisition

Dorothy Scharf, bequest, 2007 (March)

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Notes

In 1786, Francis Towne visited the English Lake District with fellow artists John Merivale and James White, and produced over a hundred drawings of the area. The background scenery in this watercolour was previously identified as the mountain Blencathra, or Saddleback (hence the former title of the work, ‘View of a Farm near Saddleback’). It is now believed to be a view of the northern part of the Glaramara fell, as seen from the Borrowdale valley - ‘Burrowdale’ was in fact inscribed on the original artist’s mount. Towne visited this area in the final week of his five-week stay in the Lake District. The restricted colour palette of greens and blues is characteristic of the artist, used in translucent washes and reinforced with pen and ink. The exaggerated height of the mountains evokes the ‘sublime’, the notion that nature can produce an overpowering yet beautiful sense of awe in the beholder. Towne’s style can be distinguished from that of his contemporaries by his use of simplified, flat planes of colour, shown here in the depiction of light and shadow on the building.

Provenance

bequeathed by the artist to James White, Exeter (1744-1825), on whose death it passed to the artist's residuary legatee, John Herman Merivale (1779-1844); by descent to his granddaughter, Mary Ann 'Molly' Loveband (b. 1865), 1915; by descent to her daughter, Joyce Merivale Loveband (b. 1895); her sale, Sotheby's (London), 16 July 1981, lot 93; purchased there by Leger Galleries (London) (£3,400); purchased there by Miss Dorothy Scharf, London (1942-2004), March 1982; Scharf Bequest 2007

Exhibition History

Exhibition of English watercolours, Leger Galleries, London, 1981

Three Exeter artists of the eighteenth century : Francis Hayman, Francis Towne, John White Abbott. Catalogue of loan exhibition by arrangement with the Arts Council of Great Britain, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 08/05/1951-22/09/1951

Exhibition of original drawings at the Gallery ... by F. Towne, The Gallery, Brook Street, London, 1805

Literature

Bury, Adrian, Francis Towne: Lone star of water-colour painting, London, 1962
p. 150
as one of two Swiss scenes

Stephens, Richard, A Catalogue Raisonné of The Works of Francis Towne, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, http://francistowne.ac.uk/collection/home
no. FT500
ill.

Inscriptions

Inscription: 12

Inscription: 84

Inscription: Burrow Dale

Inscription: Green

Inscription: E

Inscription: B7s 4457

Inscription: mi/8

Inscription: No. 27

Label: Leger Galleries March 1982

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