Francis Towne (1739–1816) is one of the most distinctive English watercolour painters of the eighteenth century. His subjects may be the familiar ones of many landscape painters of the time – Wales, the Lake District, Rome, the Alps – but he treats them with a dazzling clarity and freshness. His original approach found few admirers and in a last bid for recognition, in 1805, he mounted an entire exhibition of nearly 200 of his coloured sketches.