(1699 - 1782) of Logie, Fife; s. of Walter Bowman; FSA 1735; Dilettanti 1736; FRS 1742; his later years spent in East Moseley and Egham, Surr.; friend of Horace Walpole.
1724 - 5 see Samuel Rolle
1726 - 8 Padua
1732 - 4 see Samuel, 2nd Viscount Harcourt
1737 Bologna (by 15 Oct.)
1765 see Francis, Lord Beauchamp
For his principal tours, see under his charges. In addition, he was probably the 'Joseph Bowman' at Padua on 4 August 1728,1 and there is a letter Walter Bowman wrote from Bologna on 15 October 1737, when he was apparently travelling without a pupil.2
Bowman was an antiquary of repute and several of his volumes of manuscript notes survive. 'Memoirs for Travels in Italy' [1727], 'Travelling in Italy and France' (a companion volume), and 'Fugitive MSS' [1765] are in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, and the 'Antiquitatum tabulae' 1764, an album of miscellaneous notes c.1720 - 50, are in the National Library of Scotland. The first contains notes compiled from F?libien, Misson, Addison, Breval, Les d?lices d'Italie and other sources; the last two contain letters to and from Bowman, emphasising his erudition. The antiquary Firmin Abauzit writes to him from Geneva (17 Jan. 1733) concerning such divers topics as classical inscriptions, Scipione Maffei and the water-systems of Rieti and Terni; the German artist Giorgio Christofano Martini writes from Lucca (17 Nov. 1733) sending him drawings of Pisa.3 On 12 November 1733 from Rome, Bowman acknowledged the receipt of some Latin verses from Samuel Haynes: 'Tho I live a Sort of an old Life among Ruins yet I dare not aspire to answer you in the Language of the Gods. My muse is damnably hoarse by living underground'.4 Among the letters written by Bowman to Arthur Balfour of Fernie2 there are a number from Italy between 1731 and 1737, touching on art and architecture, and laced with complaints concerning the administration of his estate at Logie which (13 Nov. 1734) he intended to sell. On 20 April 1743 from London he wrote 'I thank God my travels abroad are finisht', but he was to travel at least once more, at the age of sixty-five, with Lord Beauchamp. Further letters from Bowman to Lady Harcourt (1730 - 3) appear in the Harcourt Papers, 3:2 - 13.
1. Brown 1853. 2. Balfour of Fernie MSS. 3. Antiquitatum tabulae. 4. Fugitive Pieces (notes by RBF).