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

Interrupting a sequence of views of the Venice waterfront near the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Turner reserved this torn or malformed page, with the book turned horizontally, to make a quick sketch of the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal, seen from the south-west off the Fondamenta del Vin, with the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi beyond to the left and the disembodied upper stages of the campanile of San Bartolomeo, in the correct juxtaposition just to its south-east above rooftops which are not themselves indicated.

Of many views of the bridge, compare the even slighter pencil rendering from about the same point in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14387; Turner Bequest CLXXV 39), and the loose watercolour from a little further away in the 1840 Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32118; Turner Bequest CCCXV 2).

Technical notes:

Regarded horizontally, this leaf measures 105 x 173 mm, rather than the full 123 x 173 mm of other pages in this sketchbook. The irregular curve of the lower (outer) edge results in its measuring 105 mm down the left-hand side, and only 73 mm on the right.

The missing section may have been torn away at an early stage, or the edge of the original sheet as bound may have been irregular through a production fault. The drawing on the verso (D31800) is carried a little way across folio 4 verso opposite (D31798), showing that the leaf was in its present state when Turner made that drawing, and likely the one on this side also, fitting neatly within the page’s reduced confines.