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

Provenance:
...
Paul Ferdinand Willert, Oxford
Gift to his daughter Dorothy, Mrs Arthur Thomas Loyd, Lockinge, Wantage
Sold from the estate of A.T. Loyd, Sotheby’s, London 27 November 1945 (58), £38
Bought by A. Paul Oppé
Denys Lyonel Tollemache Oppé and family by descent
Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996

The source of this slight work’s long-standing title, as retained here, is unknown. It is the only Venetian subject in Tate’s miscellaneous holdings of Turner’s works on paper outside the Turner Bequest, and although it was exhibited in the years leading up to its acquisition in 1996, it has attracted little attention since.1 It is also technically somewhat anomalous (see the notes below), but has been placed here with Lagoon subjects associated with 1840 from the Bequest.2

While the fishing boats of Venice featured words and emblems painted on their sails, epitomised in Turner’s oil painting The Sun of Venice going to Sea, exhibited in 1843 (Tate N00535),3 those at based at Chioggia, a town on an island just off the coast of the mainland about sixteen miles south across the Lagoon from Venice, appear to have been plainer but still distinctive. The painter New Zealand-born painter Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947), visiting in 1906, made a watercolour of Red Sails in the harbour there (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)4 and noted: ‘The red and yellow sails are of course a feature of Chioggia’.5 While the wording of the title here implies that Chioggia itself is depicted, there are no identified views of the port among Turner’s sketches, and the ghostly white forms of a waterfront and numerous towers on the horizon are perhaps intended to evoke Venice itself, as seen in the distance in the more developed colour study of The Approach to Venice (Tate D32153; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 16).

The near monochrome effect is superficially somewhat like that of contemporary Venetian studies on mid-toned brown and grey papers articulated by strong, often unmodulated accents of light and dark (see for example Tate D32222; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 3). However, these are generally nocturnal scenes, while here the rich, dark forms towards the left and the shallow white band towards the right are brought together by an overarching if subdued rainbow. Although Turner sometimes represented the phenomenon in a truer array of hues (for example Tate D18139; Turner Bequest CCVIII F), this is characteristic of those which appear in watercolour sketches over many years, even when the general range of colours is more varied than here; compare Tate D02609, D05837, D17197, D18626 or D24794 (Turner Bequest LIII 98, XCIII 40a, CXCVII G, CCXII 23, CCLIX 229).

The sheet’s early history is yet to be established, its first recorded owner being Paul Ferdinand Willert (1844–1912), an Oxford academic, writer and lawyer, who lived at the Croft, Pullen’s Lane, Headington, a large house designed for him by Alfred Waterhouse.6 He gave it to his daughter Dorothy (born 1885),7 who married Colonel Arthur Thomas Loyd (1882–1944), of Lockinge, near Wantage in Oxfordshire (then Berkshire),8 where several Turner oil paintings acquired in the late nineteenth century coincidentally formed part of what came to be known as the ‘Loyd Collection’.9 After Colonel Loyd’s death, it was auctioned from his estate at Sotheby’s, London, on 27 November 1945, as lot 58 on the second day of a sale from various sources.10 It was bought for £38 by the important collector and scholar of British and European drawings and watercolours, Paul Oppé (1878–1957), becoming item no.2299 in his collection.11 Passing to his son Denys (1913–1992),12 it was acquired by Tate from his descendants in 1996 as one of a handful of Turners among extensive holdings of works on paper by major and minor British artists (see also Tate T08245, T08526–T08530, T08221–T08224; the last four now reattributed to Clarkson Stanfield).

Technical notes:

The pale buff sheet was prepared with at least two fairly even layers of mid-brown wash; the wavy edge of the upper layer is evident along the bottom. There is some slight rubbing and chipping at the corners. The lighter areas of the sea were modulated in the course of applying the washes or washed out subsequently. Slight ripples and reflections may have been lifted out with brushstrokes or initially reserved with gum. The rainbow was scratched or rubbed out, and partly worked with the brush, giving a glowing effect at the ends, particularly at the right. The somewhat random, blotchy appearance of the sky may indicate selective lifting of the washes to evoke clouds, or later rubbing or damage. The distant buildings were applied in fluid white over the wash. A recessive violet-blue was applied to the shaded parts of the sails and hull, with opaque white mixed with the red of the sails.

Technically, this is dissimilar to any of the other 1840 Venice works on non-white paper. Various buff, grey and brown sheets were used extensively (some of which have darkened considerably),1 but this is the only instance of the even application of washes to achieve an overall middle tone. This practice is more usually associated with Turner’s earlier sketchbooks, many of which had their pages prepared with grey or brown wash (for example 1802’s Studies in the Louvre; Tate; Turner Bequest LXXII).

Verso:

Blank; laid down.