# Charles Towneley in his Sculpture Gallery [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [ZOFFANY, Johann]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 127 x 102 cm ## Commentary Antiquity was the great theme in British painting in the last decades of the 18th century. Its influence can be traced in two areas particularly - in literature, which often comes close to the macabre, and in the excavations of antique sites, which were followed with intense interest at the time. The excavation sites attracted the British travelers on the Grand Tour, and soon a fever for collecting developed that dominated elegant taste throughout Europe. Charles Towneley \(1737-1805\) was the most famous of the many English collectors. Zoffany portrayed him in his library with an imaginary assembly of the entire collection in the one room. He is shown with three friends: Charles Greville, a politician, Thomas Astle, conservator of the British Museum, and Pierre d'Hancarville, French antiquarian. The owner of the house and his counterpart, d'Hancarville, who is wearing a Rococo costume, are seated in Baroque armchairs, but the rest of the interior decoration is in the new style. This is determined by the collection itself, which was later donated to the British Museum. ## Related artworks - [Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match]() - [Portrait of Ann Brown in the Role of Miranda]() - [Portrait of Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria]() - [Portrait of Don Ferdinando di Borbone, Duke of Parma]() - [Portrait of Sir Robert Preston]() - [Portrait of William Stackhouse]() - [Prince Ernest Gottlob Albert of Mecklenburg-Strelitz]() - [The Tribuna of the Uffizi \(detail\)]() - [The Tribuna of the Uffizi \(detail\)]() - [The Tribuna of the Uffizi]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()