Charles Townley’s Sculpture Collection

William Chambers’s watercolor depicts the interior of Charles Townley’s dining room, in his home at 7 Park Street, as it appeared in 1794. The focal sculpture is the Discobolus, and flanking it are two reclined sculptures: Endymion on the left, and a drunken faun on the right. Other freestanding sculptures in the room are formally arranged in balanced opposition along the walls, which are “punctuated with marble reliefs and with busts elevated on wall brackets” (Coltman, Fabricating the Antique, 168). Prominent among them are the “Townley Venus,” excavated at Ostia (on the right), the Townley Vase and a portrait bust of Homer (against the rear wall), and a statue of Thalia, Muse of Comedy (on the left). In the background of the image, on the left, two people view a collection of busts, while perched on the plinth of the Discobolus, in the center foreground, a young woman appears to be sketching the statue in front of her; a man, likely her drawing instructor, leans over her in close proximity. The color scheme of the room, with its “blue background against the porphyry-colored Ionic columns in scagliola,” beautifully sets off the monochromatic whiteness of the marble sculptures (Coltman, Classical Sculpture, 214).  

Chambers cleverly uses perspective to enhance this arrangement and to direct the viewer’s attention. The orthogonals recede to a vanishing point behind the Discobolus, drawing the viewer’s eye to the famous Classical figure, a tactic that enforces its status as the centerpiece in the collection. While many original Greek and Roman sculptures were being copied in the late 18th century, via bronze casting or hand-made marble reproduction, the Discobolus was an authentic Roman artifact: it was unearthed during the 1791 excavation of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli and purchased by Townley shortly thereafter. Like many Roman marbles, however, the Discobolus is a copy of an original Greek bronze. Townley’s collection, built over several decades from the 1760s onwards, contained many items taken to be Greek originals. Roman antiquities, however, in many ways are “originals,” and many of these newly-discovered acquisitions placed Townley at the forefront of elite collectors. As Viccy Coltman notes, “contemporary sculpture collectors, [such as] James Smith Barry, Sir Richard Worsley, and Henry Blundell variously referred, deferred, and especially in Blundell’s case, exhausted Townley’s ‘friendship, taste, & Judgments’” (Fabricating the Antique 189). 

Chambers’s composition of the dining room orients the space effectively towards the viewer, by making most of the sculptures clearly visible and identifiable (particularly those along the wall on the right), and by positioning human figures accordingly. We witness, as on a stage, their responses and interactions with the works at hand, though these are secondary to the dynamic movements caught in and conveyed by the marble figures surrounding them. That element of interactive drama is also present in Chambers’s drawing of the sculpture collection in the Entrance Hall of Townley’s house, in which a group of visitors, with the assistance of a guidebook, inspect the collection. It is especially evident in Johann Zoffany’s colorful depiction of Townley in his library, with his collection relocated and arrayed around him. In this entirely fictional mise-en-scène, the collector, as erudite connoisseur, is accompanied by three of his closest associates, including the French antiquarian, the self-styled Baron d’Hancarville, who was invited by Townley to catalog his collection—a commission that gave rise to a more far-reaching study of Greek art. While Zoffany’s 1781–3 conversation piece (later altered to include the subsequently acquired Discobolus) does not document Townley’s house as realistically as Chambers’s does, it illustrates the integral connection between textual, theoretical knowledge dedicated to antiquity and the physical, material relics from the same period. Townley’s “neoclassical library remains the site for conversing with the ancients […] collections of books and marbles replicate the perfect precedent that is antiquity” (Coltman, Fabricating the Antique, 168). 

Townley’s sculptures at Park Street were grouped in accordance with the theories articulated by d'Hancarville, which also influenced the design of the rooms in which they were displayed (Guilding 224). They were also juxtaposed, for example in contrasting pairs, according to subject matter and composition, which was a common display strategy in the eighteenth century (Coltman, Classical Sculpture, 214–15). The Discobolus, as Thomas Jenkins enthused, celebrates “a momentary & wonderful exertion of the human faculties” (Coltman 214), while the reclined Endymion (on the left side of the image) appears to do the opposite, as he rests in eternal sleep. On the right, the drunken faun–whose faculties fail him as he falls over due to intoxication further contrasts the Discobolus’s focus, exertion, and balance. Townley’s classical Greek and Roman marbles are as disparate in theme and composition as they are unified, creating a spatio-visual conversation between continuity and discontinuity.  

Townley’s expertise was “reported to have influenced the collection, display, and publication of the ancient sculptures belonging to his contemporaries” (Coltman, Classical Sculpture, 230).  In response, contemporary collectors adopted Townley’s methods and display tactics, thus cementing his legacy beyond the confines of his own museum. After his death in 1805, Townley's collection was purchased by the British government for 20,000 pounds, and installed in the British Museum. Although it would be upstaged by the subsequent arrival of the Elgin Marbles, it remains important, not only for what it contains, but as a superlative expression of the passion for collecting antique sculpture in the period.