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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Mouth of Grand Canal’): ‘Impossible fantasy with the towers & domes of the Salute on the extreme right’.1 In fact, the arrangement is not impossible, but unusually focused in its selective presentation of a cluster of iconic buildings. From the Bacino just off the Punta della Dogana, the view is south-westwards, admittedly along the Canale della Giudecca rather than the mouth of the Grand Canal (out of sight to the right north of the point), with the south side of the Dogana in the foreground and the Seminario Patriarcale beyond, blocked in with brown, and the smaller of the main domes of Santa Maria della Salute above, flanked by its twin campanili.

The loose grid in the right foreground suggests the Dogana’s heavily rusticated porch. Compare for example a pencil drawing from a little further off in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14438; Turner Bequest CLXXV 64a), showing the wider context, as does D32174 (CCCXVI 37), an 1840 colour study from north of the Dogana, with similar evening colours and loose handling. Compare also two pages from the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32130, D32133; Turner Bequest CCCXV 14, 17), with the Salute and Dogana against a pale yellow sunset sky.

Andrew Wilton compared the ‘almost identical palette’ of other waterfront scenes in that book, such as Tate D33120 and D32126–D32128 (Turner Bequest CCCXV 4, 10–12),2 and the use of ‘blurred washes of yellow and pink’ in D32175 (CCCXVI 38).3 Ian Warrell has noted ‘Turner’s fondness for these moorings at the eastern end of the Giudecca canal’ as shown in other colour studies such as D32174, and also D32147, D32170 and D32172 (CCCXVI 10, 33, 35) showing the surroundings as they changed through the day, in this case in ‘softer fading light of the late afternoon, as it caught the highest tips of the Salute’.4

Without further elaboration, in 1881 John Ruskin categorised this work among twenty-five Turner Bequest subjects ‘chiefly in Venice. Late time, extravagant, and showing some of the painter’s worst and final faults; but also, some of his peculiar gifts in a supreme degree.’5

Technical notes:

There is a little pencil work articulating the Salute at the right. Finger marks are evident in the in the arm shadows and reflections playing beneath the moored boats.

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. The surface is abraded to the right of the centre, and there are dabs or offsets of pale blue colour towards the bottom left. Inscribed in pencil ‘24’ bottom left, upside down; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 26’ over Turner Bequest monogram below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32163’ bottom right.