J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook

Venice Sketchbook 1833

Turner Bequest CCCXIV 1–100a
Sketchbook bound in thin card boards, covered in mottled grey paste-paper; flap presumably once extending from fore-edge of front cover trimmed away; stubs of green ribbon ties secured through front cover
100 leaves of white laid paper, page size 203 x 209 mm; first leaf glued at top and bottom edges onto lilac-red laid free endpapers to form bellows-type pocket
Made by Cartiera Galvani (white leaves) and Pietro Galvani (endpapers) at Pordenone, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Italy; various leaves watermarked partially with large crescent moon with face in profile and countermarked ‘C G’; endpapers watermarked with crowned double-headed eagle bearing shield lettered ‘F I’
Numbered 241 as part of the Turner Schedule in 1854 and endorsed by the Executors of the Turner Bequest inside front cover (D41113)
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV’ on front cover, top right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketchbook is almost entirely taken up with views in and around Venice, made in an ‘intensive bout of sightseeing’ that also ‘took [Turner] to parts of the city he had previously neglected’ on his initial 1819 visit, as Ian Warrell has observed.1 Hardy George compiled the most sustained published analysis of the sketchbook’s crowded and somewhat convoluted contents,2 which forms a useful framework for further detail, as set out below. The full complement of Venetian views here was likely preceded and succeeded by a handful of subjects towards the end of the Vienna up to Venice sketchbook (Tate D31518, D31570, D31572–D31574, D31580; Turner Bequest CCCXI 52, 79–81, 84a) and one end of the Venice up to Trento book (D31600–D31601; CCCXII 2a, 3), which respectively encompass Turner’s routes to and from the city.
In the 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory, Finberg dated the present book to about 1839,3 along with other sketchbooks and sheets4 since assigned to Turner’s third and last visit to Venice in 1840 (addressed by the present author elsewhere in this catalogue). In 1930’s In Venice with Turner, he suggested that it may have been used during a proposed ‘second visit’ of three in 1835,5 ‘but in the present state of our knowledge it would be unwise to be confident about it’.6 In 1968, Luke Herrmann note Finberg’s suggestion in passing, along with the Turner scholar and curator C.F. Bell’s unpublished idea that it belonged to an 1832 tour.7 Bell (1871–1966) had made notes to that effect in a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book now held at the British Museum, associating this sketchbook with Vienna up to Venice and Venice up to Trento, as discussed by art historian Hardy George8 when he published his discovery that Turner’s second visit had actually occurred in 1833: the artist was recorded as arriving on 9 September (see the overall Introduction to the tour).
Bell’s main tool for distinguishing sketchbooks from different visits had been the presence or absence of prominent scaffolding platforms around the spire of the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s). His unpublished MS notes observing this point and others in relation to particular sketches are quoted in the individual entries, along with those by Finberg,9 who also made the general note ‘Campanile not under repair’ in relation to the book.10 George reported that ‘the following Campanile restoration dates were passed on to me by Dr. Giorgio E. Ferrari, Director of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana: 1819–21, 1822, 1824, 1830 and 1840.’11 He concluded:
[Bell’s] interesting grouping of the sketches and sketchbooks showing the Campanile with and without scaffolding seems to work when applied to the tours of 1833 (without) and 1840 (with). This also helps date some of the water-color sketches which are difficult to date stylistically and have been placed in a general period between 1835 and 1840.12
1833 has come to be accepted as the occasion this sketchbook was used,13 but the many watercolour studies previously linked to 1833 or 1835 are now almost all thought to belong to the 1840 tour, and are addressed there in this catalogue. The exceptions are six studies on grey paper (Tate D32205–D32210; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 20–25), where there is scope for speculation,14 although for clarity they too have been placed at 1840, with slight reservations noted.
Although his exact date of departure is not known, Turner’s 1833 stay must have been relatively brief: George and Lindsay Stainton each estimated ‘about ten days’,15 Cecilia Powell not ‘more than a week’,16 and James Hamilton ‘less than a week’.17 The artist was recorded again at Innsbruck on 23 September, having passed through as he headed south on the 3rd.18 He had thus taken six days at most to reach Venice by a slightly longer route than he followed on the way back, when he also (very unusually) specifically dated two sketches at Bolzano (Bozen) in the Venice up to Trento sketchbook to 22 September. Warrell has noted that he ‘would have needed to leave Venice by the 18th or 19th’ at the latest for that to be feasible.19 Folio 74 verso (D32066) is one of two pages in the present book with sketches including the reversed-‘C’ profile of a waxing moon; as discussed in the relevant entry, the new moon fell on 13 September, four days after Turner’s arrival, so the crescent would have appeared and grown over the following few nights ahead of its first quarter on the 20th.
The circuitous pattern of the sketches here is no doubt the result of the book’s being used on many separate occasions during the few days Turner spent in Venice itself this time, likely thriftily going back here and there to fill empty pages within otherwise continuous short sequences. The presence of several blank leaves about two-thirds of the way through the numbered order (folios 67 recto–71 recto; D32056–D32060) suggests he was working inwards somewhat unsystematically from both ends. The roughly double-square proportions of the pages were largely utilised with the tall, narrow book turned horizontally to provide a broad working space, with the upper stages of confined architectural subjects sometimes carried upwards over the gutter. These proportions recall those of many of the landscape-format hardback English sketchbooks Turner favoured and was accustomed to bring on his European trips, such as the Brussels up to Mannheim – Rhine book from the start of the present tour (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXCVI), during which he otherwise used notebooks acquired along the way, as in this case (see the technical notes below).
In discussing their themes, Hardy George addressed the Venice book’s drawings as now numbered straight through from front to back as foliated, noting several runs of related subjects beginning with ‘S. Giorgio Maggiore, the Piazzetta, St Mark’s and the Ducal Palace (CCCXIV 1–8a [D31929–D31942])’,20 then ‘series of views made along the Riva degli Schiavon[i], with shipping, and the Isola de San Giorgio Maggiore, as well as the entrance to the mouth of the Grand Canal, S. Maria della Salute and the Chiesa del Redentore (CCCXIV – 9–19a [D31943–D31963]).’21 Turner then re-examined the well-known ‘Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore, the Ducal Palace and the Riva (CCCXIV – 27–31 [D31978–D31986]) before focussing on a subject not included in the 1819 sketchbooks’, namely ‘the Campo de[i] SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and the interior of the church there (CCCXIV 32a–35 [D31989–D31993]).’22
As Warrell has noted, this shows that Turner was doubtless seeking Titian’s St Peter Martyr altarpiece, having already examined it in detail in Paris in 1802 and on his first Italian tour; continued ‘interest in the art of Venice led him to copy a print by Canaletto’ (see folio 15 verso; D31955), although the only other apparent study from an artwork (other than mosaics and sculpture in their architectural settings) appears to be after Van Dyck;23 see also folio 98 recto (D32111), with a similar study, perhaps from life.
Further studies of ‘the Riva degli Schiavon[i], the Ducal Palace and the Piazza of St Mark’s as well as Santa Maria della Salute (CCCXIV – 37–54 [D31997–D32031])’ are ‘followed by a few sketches of the Bridge of Sighs and the Ponte della Paglia (CCCXIV – 60–62a [D32043–D32048]). After sketching the entrance to the Arsenale [D32063; CCCXIV 73], Turner returned once more to S. Maria della Salute and the entrance to the Grand Canal (CCCXIV – 75a–76a, 80–80a [D32068–D32070, D32077–D32078]).’
A sequence along the Grand Canal ‘past the “P[alazzo] Rezzonico”, and “San Jacopo di Rialto” (CCCXIV – 80a–83 [D32078–D32083])’ comes next;24 beyond ‘the Ponte do Rialto (CCCXIV – 84 [D32084]) he sketched the Palazzi “Foscari”, “Grimani”, “Grassi”, “Balbi” (CC[C]XIV – 85–88 [D32086–D32091) and the entrance to the Grand Canal ([CCCXIV 88a; D32092]).’25 After ‘a sketch of “Santo Stefano” (CCCXIV – 89a [D32094]) he concluded [sic; or had perhaps begun] ... with familiar views of the Dogana, Ducal Palace, St Mark’s, the Riva degli Schiavoni, Santa Maria della Salute, and S. Giorgio Maggiore [folios 90 recto–100 verso; D32095–D32116].’26
The interspersed pages not specifically mentioned by George are also of fairly random character, suggesting a series of short outings or longer meandering excursions: folios 20 recto–26 verso (D31964–D31977), with views of the southern Lagoon, the Canale della Giudecca, the Bacino, the Grand Canal and likely the Rio del Palazzo; 31 verso–32 recto and 35 verso–36 verso (D31987–D31988, D31994–D31996), with the Rio del Mondo Novo, the church of Santa Maria Formosa (a new subject), and the narrow nearby canals around Santi Giovani e Paolo; 54 verso–59 verso (D32032–D32042), with panoramas towards and away from the city over the northern Lagoon, the Grand Canal, and Santa Maria Formosa again; 63 recto–66 recto (D32049–D32055), with further views of Rio del Palazzo around the Bridge of Sighs, and very loose side canal views; 71 verso–75 recto (D32061–D32067), with the church of San Martino (another new subject) near the Arsenale, San Giorgio, and rapid impressions of the Grand Canal near the Bacino by the light of the rising moon; and folio 89 recto (D32095), a view east along the full length of the canal’s southernmost reach.
The last (or first) page, folio 100 verso (D32116) was reserved for a cluster of elevations of campanili, at least one of which was observed from the upper storeys of the Hotel Europa (the Palazzo Giustinian), where Turner was likely staying27 as he did more demonstrably (based on the numerous views from it) in 1840. As a base for his sketching expeditions, this was a prime location, not far west of St Mark’s Square, with views across the entrance of the Grand Canal and the Bacino.
As George observed: ‘His manner of repeating earlier subjects sometimes seems to border on the obsessive. On the whole, however, the sketches do not have the precision of the ones from the 1819 tour’,28 reprising ‘most of the subjects found in the Venice sections of the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook ([Tate; Turner Bequest] CLXXV) and the ‘Venice to Ancona’ sketchbook ([Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXVI]).’ George detected both ‘stylistic differences’ and ‘similarities’ in the treatment of some familiar subjects (giving examples from 1819 and the 1833 Vienna up to Venice book).29 Stainton gave folios 56 recto and 80 verso (D32035, D32078) as examples of Turner’s 1833 pencil drawings of Venice being ‘more summary than those of 1819 and ... executed with a blunter point’,30 although, as discussed under the detailed study on folio 47 recto (D32017), the level of attention in the present book (and indeed in those of 1819 and 1840) can vary widely according to the interest and familiarity of the subject. Stainton suggested of the slighter drawings:
They can hardly have been used for reference purposes. Instead they were perhaps a form of mental exercise, a means of registering the process of observation; as he looked at the motif and took in its essential shape and character, so the impression which formed itself in his brain was jotted down. All this would have been done at high speed.31
Warrell has concurred, noting that Turner was ‘dogged in his adherence to the practice of sketching in pencil’, although while his ‘draughtsmanship for the scenes he had previously missed is tighter than in the sketches of buildings he had observed before’, it is ‘not nearly as fastidious as his handling in 1819’; now the ‘approach was more fragmentary, both in terms of its focus and also in the way he constructed the buildings he studies with restless, energetic lines.’32
Turner had exhibited two Venice oil paintings at the Royal Academy earlier in 1833, which were actually the first of the city he had shown, some fourteen years after his sole previous stay: Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti painting (Tate N00370);33 and Ducal Palace, Venice (currently untraced; engraved 1854 as ‘Venice. The Piazzetta’: Tate impression T06299).34 Issues with their topography and perspective doubtless induced him to re-examine their settings; see folios 23 recto and 93 verso (D31970, D32102) in relation to the first, and folio 97 verso (D32110) regarding the second.
Based on Finberg’s published comments, George noted that two sketches of ‘the Bridge of Sighs (CCCXIV 30a, 61a [D31985, D32046]) and one of the Giudecca (CCCXIV – 39 [D32001]) have been related to two Venice oil paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840’,35 immediately before Turner’s final visit. He also judged that ‘of the twenty three Venice paintings exhibited between 1834 and 1846, only about twelve would have required the type of factual information that could have been provided by the 1819 and 1833 pencil sketches.’36 The 1840 paintings were Venice, the Bridge of Sighs (Tate N00527)37 and Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Chiesa di S. Maria della Salute, &c. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; engraved 1859–61: Tate impression T06361).38 For the first, see also under folios 5 recto, 9 recto, 24 verso, 29 recto and 31 recto (D31936, D31943, D31973, D31982, D31986), and for the second, under folios 23 recto, 38 verso and 93 verso (D31970, D32000, D32102).
Other paintings subsequently shown at the Academy can be related to varying degrees to pages here, as discussed in their individual entries:
Venice 1834 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC):39 folios 2 recto, 80 verso (D31930, D33078)
Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute 1835 (Metropolitan Museum, New York; engraved 1838 as ‘The Grand Canal, Venice’: Tate impression T05787; and again 1859–61: T06341):40 folios 27 verso, 90 recto (D31979, D32095)
Juliet and her Nurse 1836 (private collection; engraved in 1842 as ‘St Mark’s Place, Venice’: Tate impression T05188):41 folios 44 recto, 98 recto, 99 verso, 100 verso (D32011, D32111, D32114, D32116)
The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842 (Tate N00372):42 folio 27 recto (D31978)
Campo Santo, Venice 1842 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio):43 folios 16 verso, 55 verso (D31957, D32034)
Dogana, and Madonna della Salute, Venice 1843 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC);44 and Venice – Maria della Salute 1844 (Tate N00539):45 folios 24 recto, 47 recto (D31972, D32017)
As Powell has characterised it, such connections made Turner’s ‘brief stay in Venice ..., in that sense, extremely fruitful. It did not, however, lead him to make watercolours and [his patron H.A.J.] Munro of Novar, who had sent him there for that purpose received an oil painting of Venice instead’;46 the painting was 1835’s Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute listed above. For this motivation for the 1833 tour (including the possibility of a watercolour), see the overall Introduction. A small watercolour of the Piazzetta, likely made soon after the 1833 tour (private collection),47 was engraved in 1835 as the title-page vignette in volume III of the Life of Napoleon for Walter Scott’s Prose Works (Tate impression: T04736); see under folios 4 recto, 8 verso and 30 recto (D31934, D31942, D31984).
Finberg recorded John Ruskin’s customary brief endorsement note on a ‘wrapper’ which (like the majority) has not survived: ‘241. Venice. Book, good for exhibition as it is.’48 Spots of impressed red wax at the top right and bottom left of the front cover, with traces of paper on the surface, may indicate that the note was once attached there. Unusually, the standard handwritten numbers at the corner of each recto appears in this case to be by C.F. Bell, in black ink over what seem to be very faint (if any) pink smudges, likely signs of the usual red ink numbers, perhaps affected by the 1928 Tate Gallery flood; the same applies to the contemporary Venice up to Trento book.
As well as by the present author’s topographical research in relation to Turner’s 1819 and 1840 visits to Venice for the corresponding sections of this catalogue, the text and individual entries here have been informed by a reading of draft notes by Ian Warrell.49 Substantive new points relating to identifications and aspects of particular subjects are acknowledged as appropriate, while the extensive amendments to individual titles he instigated in 2003, around the time of his comprehensive Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain,50 are documented in each case.
1
Warrell 2003, p.20.
2
See George 1984, pp.10, 13–15; see also Warrell 20013, p.20, with examples cited on p.260 (notes 45–47), and pp.179, 264 notes 3–4, and Hamilton 2009, p.95.
3
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1012.
4
Ibid., pp.1016–29.
5
See Finberg 1930, pp.86–116, 168–70.
6
Ibid., p.88.
7
See Herrmann 1968, p.84.
8
See George 1971, pp.85–6.
9
By both in copies of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain; and by Bell in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Study Room, British Museum, London (the latter as transcribed by Ian Warrell).
10
Finberg in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1012.
11
George 1971, p.85 note 6, also citing ‘Gregorio (Rosolino) Gattinoni’s Il Campanile di San Marco in Venezia, Venice, 1912 [sic, for 1910], [pp.]46, 63, 77, 78’.
12
Ibid., p.86.
13
See Wilton 1974, p.155, and subsequent sources.
14
See also Warrell 2003, pp.20–1.
15
George 1971, p.85; Stainton 1985, p.21.
16
Powell 1995, p.44.
17
Hamilton 2009, p.92.
18
See Powell 1995, p.44, and Powell in Warrell 2003, p.32.
19
Warrell 2003, p.260 note 40.
20
George 1984, p.13.
21
Ibid., pp.13–14.
22
Ibid., p.14.
23
See Warrell 2003, p.20.
24
George 1984, p.14.
25
Ibid., pp.14–15.
26
Ibid., p.15.
27
See Warrell 2003, p.138, and Hamilton 2009, pp.92, 95.
28
George 1984, p.10; see also Herrmann 2001, p.360.
29
George 1984, p.10.
30
Stainton 1985, p.22.
31
Ibid.
32
Warrell 2003, p.90.
33
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.200–1 no.349, pl.356 (colour).
34
Ibid., pp.202–3 no.352, pl.353 (engraving).
35
George 1984, p.14; see also p.20 note 4.
36
Ibid., p.20 note 4; for a convenient checklist of the Venice oils, see Stainton 1985, p.76.
37
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.235 no.383, pl.386 (colour).
38
Ibid., pp.235–6 no.384, pl.387 (colour).
39
Ibid., pp.205–6 no.356, pl.362 (colour).
40
Ibid., pp.212–13 no.362, pl.367 (colour).
41
Ibid., pp.215–17 no.365, pl.369 (colour).
42
Ibid., pp.245–6 no.396, pl.400 (colour).
43
Ibid., p.246 no.397, pl.401 (colour).
44
Ibid., p.252 no.403, pl.409 (colour).
45
Ibid., p.259 no.411, pl.416.
46
Powell 1995, p.44.
47
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.431 no.1105, as ‘Venice: the Campanile’, c.1833.
48
Finberg 1909, II, p.1012.
49
Draft notes of 2010–11, Tate cataloguing files.
50
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

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How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Venice Sketchbook 1833’, sketchbook, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/venice-sketchbook-r1203606, accessed 17 May 2024.