Charles TownleyFRS (1 October 1737 – 3 January 1805^[1]) was a wealthy English country gentleman, antiquary and collector, a member of theTowneley family. He travelled on three Grand Tours to Italy, buying antique sculpture, vases, coins, manuscripts and Old Master drawings and paintings. Many of the most important pieces from his collection, especially theTownley Marbles (orTowneley Marbles) are now in the British Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The marbles were overshadowed at the time, and still today, by theElgin Marbles.

Charles Townley was born in England atTowneley Hall, the family seat, nearBurnley in Lancashire, on 1 October 1737.^[2] He was the eldest son of William Towneley (1714–1741) and Cecilia, daughter and heiress ofRalph Standish ofStandish, Lancashire, and granddaughter ofHenry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk.^[3] From a Catholic family and thus excluded both from public office and from English universities,^[4] he was educated at theEnglish College, Douai, and subsequently underJohn Turberville Needham, the biologist andRoman Catholic priest.^[2]

In 1758 he came of age and took up his residence at Towneley Hall,^[5] where he made improvements to his estate. In 1765 he left England on theGrand Tour, where he established a base in Rome.^[2] He also visited Florence,Southern Italy and Sicily.^[3] He returned to London in 1772, but continued to make occasional visits to Italy until 1780.^[3] In conjunction with various dealers, includingGavin Hamilton, andThomas Jenkins, a dealer in antiquities in Rome, he got together a splendid collection of antiquities,^[2] known especially for the "Townley Marbles" (or "Towneley"),^[6] which was deposited in 1778 in a house built for the purpose in Park Street, now No. 14Queen Anne's Gate, in the West End of London, where he died on 8 January 1805.^[2]

His solitary publication was an account of theRibchester Helmet inVetusta Monumenta, a Roman cavalry helmet found near Towneley Hall,^[2][7] and now in the British Museum.^[8] He was elected aFellow of the Royal Society in March 1791.^[9] He became a member of theSociety of Dilettanti 1786, and made atrustee of the British Museum in 1791.^[7]

A large archive of Townley's papers, including diaries, account books, bills, correspondence, and catalogues, was acquired by the British Museum in 1992.

A bust of Townley was made in Carrara marble in 1807 by his associate and friend, sculptorJoseph Nollekens. It shows Townley in herm form – head and neck only, without full shoulders or arms – with a bare neck, dishevelled hair and a pensive expression. TheNational Heritage Memorial Fund, in whose 2008-9 annual report the bust is described as "masterfully executed", made a grant of £187,000 to help purchase the bust so that it could be returned to Towneley Hall Museum in the collector's former family home on the outskirts of Burnley.

The antiquities collected by Townley, which now constitute the Townley Collection at theBritish Museum, consists of some 300 items and includes one of the great collections of Graeco-Roman sculptures and other artefacts. Prominent amongst this collection are:

• The Cannibal a fragmentary sculpture of two boys fighting over a game ofknucklebones identified byJohann Joachim Winckelmann as theAstragalizontes by the classical Greek sculptorPolykleitos^[10]
• Bust of Clytie, thought by Townley to beIsis emerging from asacred lotus^[11]
• Townley Hadrian^[12]
• Townley Antinous^[13]
• Cista Mystica^[14]
• Arelief ofPan withJupiter and threenymphs holding shells^[15]
• Pair of statues ofPan, signed byMarcus Cossutius Cerdo [d]^[16]
• Tombstone of the shoemaker Xanthippos^[17]
• Townley Caryatid^[18]
• Townley Discobolus byMyron, fromHadrian's Villa^[19]
• Townley Greyhounds^[20]
• Townley Sphinx^[21]
• Townley Vase, from the Villa of Antoninus Pius at Monte Cagnolo^[22]
• Townley Venus^[23]

When Townley died in 1805 his family sold the collection of marbles, larger bronzes and terracottas to theBritish Museum for £20,000 – a sum probably a fraction of its original purchase price. The trustees of the museum obtained a parliamentary grant specifically for the purpose.^[24] The smaller antiquities, including coins,engraved gems, and pottery, followed in 1814.

Townley fully intended to leave this collection to the British Museum, as indicated in his will. However, shortly before his death he decided to leave it to the care of his brother Edward and his uncle John Townley on the condition that the sculptures should be exhibited in a purpose-built gallery. The gallery was duly constructed, but as the collection of the museum's Greek and Roman antiquities grew, it became clear that the oldMontague House, the original home of the museum, was too small for its purpose. The old Jacobean mansion and its Palladian-style Townley Gallery were pulled down in 1823 and gradually replaced with grand rooms arranged over two floors around a central courtyard, today's quadrangular building.^[25]

• 
  The Knuckle Bone Player (Roman c.150AD)
• 
  Bust of Clytie
• 
  A relief from Townley's collection, fromHadrian's Villa near Tivoli, ca. 125 AD
• 
  A female acrobat next to a potter's turntable. Detail from a Campanian red-figure hydria, ca. 340-330 BC.
• 
  Tombstone of the shoemaker Xanthippos. Marble, Greek artwork, ca. 430-420 BC. From Athens
• 
  Head of a tiger, possibly a boss from the arms of a throne; Indian

Charles Townley became the most famous member of the family and another of the treasures now at Towneley is a conversation piece^[26] byJohan Zoffany of Townley in his London house surrounded by an imaginary arrangement of his major sculptures (over forty are represented).^[a] Engaged in discussion with him are three fellow connoisseurs, the palaeographer Charles Astle, Hon.Charles Francis Greville, F.R.S., andPierre-François Hugues d'Hancarville.

Prominent in front are Townley's Roman marble of theDiscobolus,^[b] theNymph with a Shell, of which the most famous variant was also in the Borghese collection^[c] and aFaun of theBarberini type. On a pedestal in front of the fireplace, theBoys Fighting from the Barberini collection had been Towneley's first major purchase, in 1768 (Winckelmann had identified it as a lost original byPolykleitos). In point of fact, Towneley's only Greek original appears to have been the grave relief on the left wall above theBust of a Maenad posed on a wall bracket.

The so-calledBust of Clytie^[d] perches on the small writing-table, in Zoffany's assembly of the Townley marbles. It was extensively reproduced in marble, plaster, and the white bisque porcelain called parian ware for its supposed resemblance toParian marble.Goethe owned two casts of this.^[27] TheBust of Clytie was apparently Townley's favourite sculpture and the one he took with him when he was forced to flee his home during the anti-Catholicriots of 1780.

TheTownley Venus on a Romanwell-head that serves as drum pedestal had been discovered byGavin Hamilton atOstia and quietly shipped out of the Papal States as two fragmentary pieces.^[28] The marbleTownley Vase, also furtively exported, stands on the bookcase at the rear: it was excavated about 1774 by Gavin Hamilton at Monte Cagnolo.

• I. Bignamini, C. Hornsby,Digging And Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome (2010), p. 326–331
• Tony Kitto, 'The celebrated connoisseur: Charles Townley, 1737–1805', inMinerva Magazine (May/June 2005), in connection with a British Museum exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of the Townley purchase.
• A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800, Compiled from theBrinsley Ford Archive by John Ingamells (1997)
• Sir Henry Ellis:The Townley Gallery of Classic Sculpture in the British Museum 1846.
• Penny, Nicholas (1984). "Townley at the B. M. and Cavaceppi at the Clarendon Gallery. London".The Burlington Magazine.126 (970): 2,54–6.ISSN 0007-6287.JSTOR 881529.
• B.F. Cook, The Townley Marbles London, The British Museum Press, 1985
• Nicole Cochrane, 'Ancient art and the eighteenth-century auction: Collecting, catalogues and competition'Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2021

• 1737 births
• 1805 deaths
• 18th-century English antiquarians
• 19th-century English antiquarians
• English art collectors
• People from Burnley
• People associated with the British Museum
• Townley collection
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• English College, Douai alumni
• English Roman Catholics
• Towneley family

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