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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of ?Fishermen in Small Boats on the Lagoon near Venice, with Campanili and Domes in the Distance 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of ?Fishermen in Small Boats on the Lagoon near Venice, with Campanili and Domes in the Distance’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Recto:
Studies of ?Fishermen in Small Boats on the Lagoon near Venice, with Campanili and Domes in the Distance 1840
D31874
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 43
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘43’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 43’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are various rapid, related sketches here, made with the page turned horizontally. Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Shipping’): ‘Several slight sketches from Lagoon’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Panoramas from gondola’.2 The ‘canal Orfano’ mentioned by Finberg in relation to folios 40 recto–44 recto (D31868–D31876)3 runs from the Canale di San Marco to the more open waters south of Venice.
The figures in small boats may be fishermen; see also folios 42 recto and verso (D31872–D31873). The array of distant domes likely includes the Redentore, the Zitelle, San Giorgio Maggiore and Santa Maria della Salute. The tall tower at the centre may be the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), which is shown in the distance on the opposite page (D31873).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p1011.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.102.
3
Finberg 1930, p.171.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Studies of ?Fishermen in Small Boats on the Lagoon near Venice, with Campanili and Domes in the Distance 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-studies-of-fishermen-in-small-boats-on-the-lagoon-near-r1196769, accessed 12 December 2024.