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

The view is to the north-west from the Bacino off the Ponte del Vin, with the Palazzo Dandolo (Hotel Danieli) loosely drawn in the foreground, the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) blocked in towards the left, and the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond, as Finberg noted.1 Turner was long familiar with the scene; compare for example Tate D14494 (CLXXVI 4) in the 1819 Venice to Ancona sketchbook.

The same prospect seems to be shown in a moonlit colour study (Tate D32225; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 6), included in a parallel section of Bacino and other waterfront subjects; the present sketch is not included there owing to its sharing a folded sheet with D32196–D32197 (CCCXVII 14a, b), which include the Bridge of Sighs, and a fourth, unidentified Venetian subject (D32199; CCCXVII 14d; see the technical notes).

Technical notes:

This is one of four slight subjects on the recto of a sheet folded vertically and horizontally; see also Tate D32196, D32197 and D34199 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 14a, b, d), and compare Tate D32192–D32195 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 13a–d). The dimensions given are as recorded by Tate conservators, representing the overall sheet, and those of the present portion are approximately half those given in each direction.

Slight irregularities along the overall top edge of CCCXVII 13 (the half comprising D32192–D32193) match those at the bottom edge of the verso of CCCXVII 14 (D32198–D32199), showing that they once formed a continuous sheet. In discussing the papers used in Venice in 1840, Ian Warrell has described this as ‘Lightweight buff grey-paper from an unknown source, possibly English, with the watermark: “W”’.1

Among the Venetian sheets in paper conservator Peter Bower’s 1999 survey of Turner’s later papers,2 Tate D32233 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 14) was exhibited3 and reproduced, but there is a seemingly inadvertent mismatch.4 The detailed description and discussion of the sheet appear to apply to the present sheet, and Bower also refers to ‘CCCXVIII 13’,5 meaning CCCXVII 13. It is unclear whether the associated micrograph image relates to the present sheet or CCCXVIII 14.6 Bower noted: ‘Lightweight buff-grey wove | Watermark: W | Unknown maker’. He went on: ‘This quarter sheet is part of a well-formed lightweight buff wove sheet that also includes CCCXVIII 13’ (i.e. CCCXVII 13), torn down from a ‘full sheet size of approximately 17 ¾ x 22 ¾’ (inches; 450 x 578 mm), which ‘only matches one English paper size, Extra Large Post’, generally used for ‘white writing paper rather than coloured papers’; he suggested the German ‘Gross Median’ format of 460 x 590 mm as another possibility. Bower noted Tate D40202 (Turner Bequest LXXIV C), ‘erroneously catalogued as part of the [1802] Grenoble sketchbook’, but likely a Swiss 1840s sketch, as a ‘part sheet of this same paper ... also watermarked W in an outline capital’7 (compare the watermark on Tate D32195; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 13d).

Verso:

Blank, with some brown staining at the outer edges; inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘2 V’ towards top left; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVII – 14’ top left, upside down. Turner’s ‘2 V’ is one a few such inscriptions on Venice-related sheets; see the Introduction to the tour.