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

The view is to the east along the Grand Canal. At a glance, the prospect appears similar to that shown in a more developed watercolour in the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32122; Turner Bequest CCCXV 6), but the viewpoint here is from nearer the north side of the canal and perhaps further forward, with the Casa Succi at the entrance to Rio del Santissimo in left foreground (opposite Campo San Vio), and the much larger Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande beyond, diminished by the steep perspective.

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Salute and Dogana’): ‘looking E from the Traghetto di San Gregorio’;1 Finberg later suggested: ‘from the Traghetto S. M. Zobenigo’2 (also known as Santa Maria del Giglio). These are opposite each other further on, towards Santa Maria della Salute. Ian Warrell favoured the Traghetto San Maurizio,3 just past the Casa Succi. Receding on the opposite side are the Ca’ Biondetti, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, and Casa Artom; Palazzo Dario and a compressed run of palaces (now terminating in the prominent late nineteenth century Gothic-revival Palazzo Genovese) follows, with the porch of the Dogana in silhouette beyond the gondolas, at the Bacino entrance to the canal.

The domes of the Salute and some west-facing walls catch the light from south, suggesting the early afternoon.4 D32122 shows a similar effect; despite a long, subjective discussion of some supposed points of weakness in Turner’s 1840 Venice watercolours, Finberg detected ‘flashes of the familiar vigour and decision. The dome and tower of the Salute, for instance ..., are struck in with all the old force and fire’ in each case.5 Warrell has observed that in ‘both watercolours the domes and towers of the Salute are defined more by what has been omitted than by a slavish realisation of their actual appearance’6 (see under D32122 for John Ruskin’s comments on Turner’s quest to express the brightness of architecture in the powerful Venetian light); the ‘radiant afternoon sunlight ... catches the flanks of buildings and the domes of the Salute so powerfully that they become disembodied. Watercolour is not used merely to describe form, but also to represent the shadows by which from is defined.’7

Warrell has compared the view in the two watercolours with that in an 1827 painting by Richard Parkes Bonington which Turner knew;8 he had also been familiar with the prospect even before first visiting Venice in 1819, making a watercolour around that time (private collection)9 based on a detailed pencil view by James Hakewill (British School at Rome)10 in connection with the latter’s Picturesque Tour of Italy, although Turner’s interpretation was not engraved. Lindsay Stainton suggested that the ‘simplicity of design and topographical truth’ here suggest that the sheet may have been worked ‘on the spot’, although (as ever with Turner’s colour studies) ‘sketchiness is not of itself much of an indication’.11 She noted that it may have informed the ‘more elaborately developed watercolour’ The Grand Canal, with the Salute (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).12 Anne Lyles has noted the similar pencil view in the contemporary Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook (Tate D32416; Turner Bequest CCCXX 78a),13 made from a little further east.

Tate D32143 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 6), also in this subsection, is centred on Campo San Vio, and was taken from about the same viewpoint, looking south-south-west across the canal.

Technical notes:

The top edge is slightly irregular.

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as on sheets of ‘white paper produced [under the name] Charles Ansell,1 each measuring around 24 x 30 cm, several watermarked with the date “1828”’:2 Tate D32138–D32139, D32141–D32143, D32145–D32147, D32154–D32163, D32167–D32168, D32170–D32177, D35980, D36190 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 1, 2, 4–6, 8–10, 17–26, 30, 31, 33–40, CCCLXIV 137, 332). Warrell has also observed that The Doge’s Palace and Piazzetta, Venice (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin)3 and Venice: The New Moon (currently untraced)4 ‘may belong to this group’.5

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘29’ bottom left, upside down; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 1’ over Turner Bequest monogram below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32138’ bottom right.