View of Lake Como
Francis Towne British
Not on view
Towne traveled to Italy in 1780–81 and experimented with watercolor in ways that influenced the medium’s expressive development. As he headed home via the Italian lakes, he made these studies, dated August 27, from a boat on Lake Como, leaving fingerprints in the wet pigment along the lower edge of one sheet, its composition centered on a sunlit hillside backed by distant mountains. The other work is more claustrophobic, showing sheer gray cliffs plunging into the lake before the cloud-topped peak named Monte Legnone. The abstracted quality of Towne’s work results from patches of subtly modulated watercolor edged with lines of ink. Other sheets from the related sketchbook are preserved at Tate Britain and the Yale Center for British Art.
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