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

The prospect is south-eastwards along the Grand Canal, with the Fondaco dei Tedeschi pale in the distance, on the sharp right-hand bend leading immediately to the Rialto Bridge. Beyond the Fondamenta della Riva dell’Ogio in the right foreground is the Campo della Pescaria (Fish Market), where the early twentieth-century Pescaria building now stands. The north end of the Fabbriche Nuove is at the centre; on the skyline to its right are the campanili of San Bartolomeo (now obscured by the Pescaria), the more distant San Marco (St Mark’s), and the darker San Giovanni Elemosinario.

The treatment of the east side of the canal is somewhat condensed and perfunctory, such that Andrew Wilton felt the pencil work ‘which suggests buildings, may have been on the paper before Turner began the drawing; it does not seem to be related to the subject’.1 However, the view seems all of a piece, articulated by a blue-striped mooring pole, and perhaps with loose indications of the balconies of the Palazzo Fontana Rezzonico or the Palazzo Giusti beyond Turner’s vantage point. The view is effectively the same as in a pencil study in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14461; Turner Bequest CLXXV 76a); others show the same reach in the 1833 Venice sketchbook (Tate D32041, D32072, D32082; Turner Bequest CCCXIV 59, 77a, 82a), There is also a contemporary pencil sketch in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg book (Tate D31303; Turner Bequest CCCX 14).2

Ian Warrell has linked this view with another colour study from this sketchbook, looking north-westwards away from the Rialto from about the same position to form a ‘panoramic survey’ (Tate D32132; Turner Bequest CCCXV 19); they share ‘pallid greys and greens, which lend an insubstantiality to the architecture’, suggesting that Turner worked on them ‘concurrently, maximising his time by alternating between them to allow his washes to dry.’3

Warrell has that about half the views associated with this sketchbook depict the ‘long canyon of palaces’ winding north and south of the Rialto Bridge along the ‘central part’ of the Grand Canal: D32117–D32119, D32123, D32131, D32132, D32134–D32137 (Turner Bequest CCCXV 1, 2, 3, 7, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21).4 See also D32121, D32122 and D32124 (CCCXV 5, 6, 8), showing scenes near its north-west and south-east ends; the present page is another central subject now also linked to the book. For sites beyond the Grand Canal, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Technical notes:

Pencil work is restricted to the left foreground only. The sheet is very yellowed, and the colours commensurately muted from prolonged early display in the Third Loan Collection, except at the edges and a wider band at the left-hand side which were formerly protected by a mount.

In 1995 Ian Warrell proposed that this sheet belonged as part of the present sketchbook on technical and stylistic grounds,1 and incorporated it as such by 2003, accounting for the discrepancy on one between the tallies in John Ruskin’s original endorsement and section CCCXV of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory;2 see the sketchbook’s Introduction for full details.

        Verso:

Inscribed in pencil ‘No 12’ top left, upside down; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI–41’ over Turner Bequest monogram bottom centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32178’ bottom left.

Although not accessioned with a Tate ‘D’ number, this side includes a loose pencil sketch of a cargo boat with a single mast towards the bottom right, and what could variously be a mullioned window, a light or the top of a campanile ‘drawn’ as a rough grid of vertical and horizontal strokes in watercolour above it towards the centre right. It is unclear whether these elements were intended as pictorially related.