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 The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, beyond the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana, with Shipping in the Bacino 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, beyond the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana, with Shipping in the Bacino’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Recto:
The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, beyond the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana, with Shipping in the Bacino 1840
D31795
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 3
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘3’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 3’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In a rapidly rendered two-part panoramic view of a familiar scene, made with the page turned horizontally, the viewpoint is the Bacino off the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), looking north-west in the upper section to the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana at the entrance to the Piazzetta on the right, then along the waterfront past the gardens westwards towards the north side of the entrance to the Grand Canal, with the prominent campanile of San Moisè. Below, the prospect is continued (turning left from the upper part), with the south side of the canal dominated by the domes of Santa Maria della Salute and the porch of the Dogana below to the south-west, off which two-masted ships are moored.
Compare the loose 1840 watercolour, Tate D32152 (CCCXVI 15), showing the same juxtapositions albeit without the buildings in the right foreground. See also the view into the Piazzetta from the Bacino on the verso (D31796). Andrew Wilton has used the present page as an example of the ‘forceful freedom of the sketches in this book’.1

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Wilton 1974, p.155.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, beyond the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana, with Shipping in the Bacino 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-the-dogana-and-santa-maria-della-salute-at-the-entrance-to-r1196689, accessed 24 November 2024.