Gavin Hamilton's Letters to Charles Townley

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton was the most active and successful of the band of excavators at work on Italian soil in the second half of the eighteenth century. He was employed by several collectors, notably by Charles Townley, and by Lord Shelburne, and, apart from his work as an artist, he carried on an active business in obtaining concessions of promising spots, and in the restoration and export of the proceeds of his excavations. Until a recent date, our chief information with respect to Hamilton's diggings was derived from a summary, drawn up by Dallaway, of Hamilton's letters to Townley. The original letters appear to be lost, and Prof. Michaelis was unable to trace them, when he was investigating this subject. Other details, copied by Townley from the letters into his MS. inventories, have thence found their way into the British Museum Marbles, and other works on the Townley sculptures.

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