Name: JOHN WHITE ABBOTT (EXETER 1763-1851)
Brand: View of Aiguilles du Dru, near Chamonix, France
Price: 1000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

JOHN WHITE ABBOTT (EXETER 1763-1851)
View of Aiguilles du Dru, near Chamonix, France
signed with the artist's monogram and inscribed 'L'Aigle de sout drent / Fr. Towne. Light from the right JWA' (verso), further signed and inscribed 'L'aiguille. Light R. F.T. JWA' (on a fragment of the old mount)
pen and grey ink, grey and blue wash on paper
9¹⁄₈ x 6¹⁄₂ in. (23.2 x 16.5 cm.)

The artist, and by descent in the family to
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 21 March 2001, lot 175 (part).

R. Stephens, A Catalogue Raisonné of Francis Towne (1739-1816), no. 834, online edition.

Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Three Exeter Artists of the Eighteenth Century: Francis Hayman RA, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, 1951, no. 137.

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Lot Essay

This drawing is based on a now lost work by Abbott's master Francis Towne (FT337) and repeats Towne's inscriptions on the verso. It depicts the Aiguilles du Dru, near Chamonix, a vast pyramidal mountain in the Mont Blanc range. White Abbott, who was an Exeter pupil of Towne's, never travelled to Europe, but made over twenty copies after Towne's watercolours of the Alps, clearly inspired by the dramatic landscapes.
Towne took this view from Montanvert, the mountain he had climbed to view the Mer de Glace glacier on 16 September 1781, the origin of his most famour watercolour.