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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore’): ‘S. Giorgio from the Dogana’.1 The page’s title was slightly amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with a Gondola’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.2 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. From the alignment of the tower, dome, pediment and other elements, with the church presented head on as in a formal architectural drawing, the viewpoint appears to be quite far back across the Bacino, looking east-south-east from around the entrance to the Grand Canal just north of the Dogana.

The subject, flanked by the lighthouses of the island’s harbour on the left, and the lower monastery buildings on the right, is comparable to one of the few highly atmospheric watercolours Turner made in the Como and Venice sketchbook on his first visit to the city in 1819 (Tate D15254; Turner Bequest CLXXXI 4); there, the alignment is slightly oblique, indicating that the viewpoint was slightly further left (that is, northwards), from in front of the Palazzo Giustinian, opposite the Dogana.

Turner probably stayed at the palace (then the Hotel Europa) in 1833 (see the sketchbook’s Introduction and under folio 100 verso; D32116), while a view from his bedroom there in 1840 (Tate D32219; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 34) includes San Giorgio in the distance as a foil to the soaring campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s). The present drawing likely informed the painting Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC),3 where the church is seen gleaming in sunlight beyond the Dogana, largely in shadow in the right foreground; see also under folio 80 verso (D32078).

A careful pencil drawing in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14442; Turner Bequest CLXXV 66a) prefigures the present frontal study; compare also an 1840 watercolour view of the church towards sunset from the Europa (Tate D32165; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 28). Its island setting in a prominent position opposite the entrances to the Grand Canal and the Canale della Giudecca, and sightlines towards it from the Piazzetta and Riva degli Schiavoni, ensure that the church is seen from multiple angles in many works associated with all three visits. For passing references to this page in terms of other views from about this direction, see under folio 27 recto (D31978),4 a view from further east, and for this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,5 see its Introduction.