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: The Grand Canal > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Fabbriche Nuove and the Campanile of San Giovanni Elemosinario 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Fabbriche Nuove and the Campanile of San Giovanni Elemosinario’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Fabbriche Nuove and the Campanile of San Giovanni Elemosinario 1840
D32149
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 12
Pencil and watercolour on pale buff wove paper, 225 x 300 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1530’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI 12’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The viewpoint is off the Palazzo Crivan on the east side of the Grand Canal, near the Rialto bend. The prospect is to the north-west, with the long front of the Fabbriche Nouve appearing slightly compressed or truncated. Turner has been careful to give the impression of the further half of the regular façade, where it turns a few degrees to follow the curve of the canal, being caught in morning shadow, creating a sense of observed immediacy.
Beyond lies the Pescaria, with the Ca’ Corner della Regina and Ca’ Pesaro further on along that side; compare a colour study (Tate D32135; Turner Bequest CCCXV 19) from the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook. There is little detail on the sunlit glare of the right-hand side, apart from heavily articulated Ca’ Vendramin Calergi in the distance and, towards the right, the southern corner of the Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne, with its windows and a balcony picked out in grey.
Ian Warrell has suggested that Turner may have worked directly in watercolour on various parings of subjects in bright morning light north of the Rialto Bridge ‘concurrently, maximising his time by alternating between them to allow his washes to dry’.1 He has linked two seen from a point north-west of the Pescaria and Fabbriche Nuove (Tate D32135, mentioned above, and D32178; CCCXVI 41, also from the Grand Canal and Giudecca book), and two looking south to the bridge and north-west past the Fabbriche Nuove, also from the Grand Canal and Giudecca book (D32119, D32132; CCCXV 3, 16). The views in this second pairing are closely comparable respectively to The Rialto Bridge from the North (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh) 2 and the present work, both executed on separate sheets of pale buff paper (see the technical notes below).3
Notwithstanding the apparent directness of its treatment, Warrell has noted this sheet among numerous echoes of Antonio Visentini’s engravings (originally published in 1735–42) after Canaletto’s paintings of Venice, particularly those set along the Grand Canal.4
1
Warrell 2003, p.151.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.464 no.1369, reproduced.
3
See Warrell 2003, pp.150 – 1.
4
See Warrell 2003, pp.43–4 for general discussion, and pp.151, 264 note 8 in relation to the present subject.
Technical notes:
This is one of a few 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as on ‘Pale buff wove paper, produced by an unknown maker, with the watermark: “J W”’:1 Tate D32148–D32149, D32169, D32211, D32219, D32247 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 11, 12, 32, CCCXVII 26, 34, CCCXVIII 28); see also Venice from the Lagoon (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),2 the Rialto Bridge subject mentioned above and The Palazzo Balbi on the Grand Canal, Venice (both National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).3 Warrell has noted paper conservator Peter Bower’s suggestion ‘that this type of paper was a deliberate forgery of Whatman paper and was possibly produced in Austria’,4 and that the ‘inferior quality has resulted in visible changes to the paper, which is especially prone to fading’.5
1
‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, section 4) in Warrell 2003, p.259; see also Finberg 1909, II, p.1018, Finberg 1930, p.174, Wilton 1974, p.154, Wilton 1975, pp.138, 143, Wilton 1976, p.148, Wilton 1982, p.60, and Wilton 1983, p.287.
2
Wilton 1979, p.464 no.1362, reproduced.
3
Ibid., respectively p.464 no.1369, reproduced, p.465 no.1372, reproduced.
4
See Peter Bower, Turner’s Later Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of his Drawing Papers 1820–1851, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.110 under no.63.
5
Warrell 2003, p.259.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVI – 12’ below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32149’ bottom left.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Fabbriche Nuove and the Campanile of San Giovanni Elemosinario 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-grand-canal-venice-with-the-fabbriche-nuove-and-the-r1196443, accessed 22 July 2024.