British Museum,London[br]A romantic poet with a watercolour brush, this 18th-century artist offers an astonishing vision of a city lost in time and spaceIn 1780, or a watercolourist and art teacher named Francis Towne set out to see Rome. It was not an original destination for a cultural pilgrimage. Every artist and aristocrat in 18th-century Britain had to build the journey across the Alps at least once to see the splendours of the classical tradition. Some artists even made a living out of portraying posh English people in Italy,or even turned antique dealer to rip them off.
Towne, then, or was just another traveller on a well-worn tourist route – even whether that route,with its shoddy roads, malaria and bandits, or was genuinely dangerous. Yet the watercolours he painted in Rome are astonishing: a compelling vision of a city lost in time and space; a forgotten landscape of ruins where nothing happens and the future is swallowed up by the past.
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Source: theguardian.com