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

This view over the Bacino towards sunset is likely from just off the north side of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, looking west-south-west to the entrance of the Grand Canal at the centre, flanked on the left by the silhouetted domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute and the porch of the Dogana below on its near side. The lightly indicated spire-like structure on the right may be intended as the campanile of San Moisè, north of the canal, or that of Santo Stefano, which otherwise ought to appear between it and the Salute from this angle.

John Gage observed that among the various modes employed in this sketchbook, Tate D32134–D32137 (Turner Bequest CCCXV 18–21) ‘are in a muted range of greens and browns which seem to come from a direct experience of the subject’, whereas D32127–D32130 (CCCXV 11–14) ‘have a far more complex technique and brilliant colouring; which suggests that perhaps both modes were used interchangeably for indoor work.’1 This is symptomatic of the general issue of Turner’s direct use of colour outdoors, generally a moot point in his Venice work as it is for many other subjects, however immediate their effect.2 Andrew Wilton noted this as ‘very similar in viewpoint, colouring and treatment’ to another study from this sketchbook (D32133; CCCXV 17),3 which shows a closer view in similar hazy conditions. See also three contemporary studies on pale grey-white paper, looking across the Bacino in evening light with the Dogana and Salute on the left (Tate D32150–D32152; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 13–15).4

The mood here has been described in detail by Anne Lyles: an ‘impression of still and suffused watery light is brilliantly rendered in a sequence of delicate and translucent washes of yellow, turquoise and grey; the only suggestion of solid form is an intermittent boat mast or post in the water, indicated by Turner with a few summary brushstrokes of dry brown pigment’.5 Ian Warrell has outlined the way this work and D32133 ‘treat the pyramidal bulk of the Dogana and the Salute as a combined motif ... suffused with a zesty lemon sunlight’, evoking ‘the eye’s inability to pick out detail when looking at objects against the light’, here rendering the two buildings in ‘a single plane of grey colour, though this flat area of paint does not destroy the illusion of depth within the image.’6

Warrell has noted7 how Turner’s contemporary, the marine painter Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867), ‘intuitively recognised the visual similarities between the tip of the Dogana and the prow of a ship,8 and this was a motif that Turner also chose to isolate in his paintings’ such as this study and D32133, and the subsequent oils Dogana, and Madonna della Salute, Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)9 and Venice – Maria della Salute, shown there in 1844 (Tate N00539).10

Michael O’Neill of Durham University used this work as an example in an extensive discussion of Turner’s work in relation to the imagery of European landscape, colour and light in the poetry of his short-lived Romantic contemporary Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).11 In 2008 the German-based Japanese painter and photographer Hiroyuki Masuyama (born 1968) produced an LED lightbox image based on the present work as one of a series reinterpreting Turner’s landscapes, combining the original composition with digitally layered photographic landscape and architectural elements.12

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘Book No 13’ bottom left; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXV – 14’ bottom right.

There is some thinning and abrasion to the surface towards the bottom left and right. There are pale ochre strokes or offsets of colour at the bottom right, originally the sketchbook’s gutter, presumably from watercolour work on whichever subject was originally bound opposite (see the sketchbook’s Introduction).