Francis Towne achieved no recognition in his lifetime, yet today his watercolours are acknowledged as among the most original of the generation of landscape painters between Wilson and Turner. Towne's life and art are full of paradox: a successful drawing master in Exeter, he failed on ten occasions to win election to the Royal Academy; now hailed as a innovate watercolourist, he kept his work almost entirely to himself for most of his life, only to relent in old age and mount what was probably the first one-man show of watercolours in the history of British art. The catalogue is based on research in Britain and abroad. It sheds much light on Towne himself and the artistic and cultural context in which he worked; the society of 18th-century Exeter where Towne found most of his patrons is especially highlighted.