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

Finberg later annotated his cursory 1909 Inventory entry (‘Bridge, with buildings on both sides of canal’): ‘Grand Canal Venice & P. del Rialto CFB’.1 This acknowledged the Turner scholar C.F. Bell, who marked another copy, emphatically underlining the text and adding: ‘Grand Canal Venice and Ponte del Rialto!! ?from the approdo [landing stage] of the Albergo Leon Bianco?’2 With the page turned horizontally, the view is east-north-east along the middle reach of the Grand Canal, centred on the distant but unmistakeable form of the Rialto Bridge, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi beyond and the adjacent campanile of San Bartolomeo to its right, with what is likely the small disk of the low morning sun level with its onion dome.

Hardy George compared the prospect to a very slight view of the bridge and tower beyond boats in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14467; Turner Bequest CLXXV 79a),3 describing the ‘minimum amounts of quickly pencilled and somewhat heavy lines, and no colour, atmospheric effects or reflections indicated’ here, as an example of Turner’s typical sketching practice in 1833.4 This is one of only two Venetian subjects in the present book, the other, on folio 2 verso opposite (D31600), being around the south-eastern entrance to the Grand Canal near the Palazzo Giustinian (Hotel Europa), where Turner had probably been staying.

It may be that the pencil work is particularly cursory here if Turner was hastily sketching these well-known scenes again as a last shot after his stay of only a few days, as he was ferried to the other end of the canal to embark for the mainland. Bell’s note of the ‘Albergo Leon Bianco’ as the possible viewpoint prompts a comparison with a much more elaborate 1819 Milan to Venice drawing (Tate D14406–D14407; Turner Bequest CLXXV 48a–49), which included part of that hotel (the Palazzo Cavalli) in the foreground.

As detailed under those pages, Turner likely lodged there on that first visit and was already very familiar with the view, having previously been commissioned to make a watercolour to be engraved for James Hakewill’s 1820 Picturesque Tour of Italy (Tate impression: T06012), based on the author’s own pencil drawing made with an optical device (see also a ‘colour beginning’ associated with the project, Tate D32144; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 7). The artist perhaps quickly reprised the subject simply in fond remembrance.