The Exeter lawyer James White wrote on July 8, 1786, to his artist friend Francis Towne, who was residing in London at the time, encouraging him to join in a “Northern Expedition” along with their other friend and lawyer John Merivale, commenting, “We both heartily wish to have you for a companion.” It had been six years since Towne’s study trip to Italy (1780–81). The three traveling companions to Britain’s Lake District were probably inspired by William Gilpin’s Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty Made in the Year 1773, on Several Parts of England; Particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, published the same year as their journey. Gilpin had discussed his own “picturesque tour” of the Lake District. In White’s letter, he laid out their plan, suggesting to begin the first or second week of August, with Towne meeting them in Manchester and for their “adventures either in diligences on Horseback or on Foot.”¹

They stayed a little more than two weeks in the Lake District, making day trips from their accommodations at Ambleside on Lake Windermere for half their time before moving on to the central portion of the Lake District on August 17, and ending their tour east of St. John’s in the Vale, near Ullswater, a long lake west of Keswick, on the road between Ambleside and Penrith.² In completing the tour, Towne made more than forty drawings in a large sketchbook and thirty concise drawings in a smaller sketchbook, as well as probably a hundred individual drawings on large sheets of paper. Timothy Wilcox has pointed out that, unlike Towne’s sketches in Switzerland, which were made on upright sheets and focused on the verticality of the surroundings and on a singular feature, such as mountain peaks, his views in the Lake District required sheets for the “extended, panoramic shape of so many of the views,” in which he balanced the diverse elements in the compositions.³

This watercolor portrays the lake of Ullswater, viewing from the southwest when standing on the Pooley Bridge over the River Eamont, near Penrith. Towne utilized his characteristic method of drawing the forms before him with pure pencil lines, reinforcing them with pen and ink. He would then layer the flat washes of color before reapplying brown and gray ink on the outlines. Towne looked to capture the primary elements of the landscape, eliminating details, lending the work a rather modern appearance. He used shades of gray, brown, blue, and green to distinguish the masses. Mirror-like reflections of the vegetation appear on the watery surface of the placid lake, seen from the artist’s high vantage point. The inscription on the drawing’s verso indicates that his focus was on how the light streamed into the scene from the left, making one side of the lake brighter than the other.
 
Richard Stephens has suggested that this watercolor was in Towne’s one-man retrospective exhibition in 1805, in which possibly three watercolors by Towne portraying Ullswater were on display. Only two other finished views of Ullswater are known, Ullswater from Gowbarrow Park (fig. 13.1) and At Ullswater.⁴ Along with a host of other drawings of varying degrees of finish, this watercolor was most likely contained in the same sketchbook as the other two drawings of Ullswater, and subsequently removed and placed in mounts made by the artist in 1790–91.⁵ This watercolor could be on the thick, absorbent Roman paper that Towne had brought back from his Italian journey, as he used up the rest of his stock for his Lake District landscapes. The paper’s thickness made it easier for Towne to sometimes paint watercolors outdoors, instead of having to draw the composition with a pencil and then return to the studio for color treatment. —Dena M. Woodall