Joseph Mallord William Turner The Zitelle and San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Venice 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
The Zitelle and San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Venice
1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Zitelle and San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Venice 1840
D32177
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 40
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 40
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 245 x 310 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1579’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 40’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1579’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 40’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1896
Fifth Loan Collection, National Gallery, London 1896, Grosvenor Museum, Chester 1897–9, Corporation Galleries, Glasgow 1900–2, National Gallery, London 1903, Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol 1904–6, National Gallery, London 1907–8, Liverpool Art Gallery 1909–10, Aberdeen 1911, Nottingham Art Gallery 1912, Grosvenor Museum, Chester 1913, Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth, February 1914, Blackpool 1915, Blackburn Art Gallery 1916–18, Bradford Art Gallery 1919–20, Burnley 1921–2, Colne 1923–4, Rawtenstall 1925–6, Tate Gallery, London 1927–30, transferred to the British Museum, London 1931 (no catalogue but numbered 1).
1938
La Peinture anglaise: XVIIIe & XIXe siècles, Louvre, Paris, February–August 1938 (248, as ‘Venise, l’entrée de Chioggia’, c.1839).
1938
[Display of Watercolours], National Gallery, London, December 1938–September 1939 (no catalogue, but frame no.40).
2004
TurnerWhistlerMonet, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, June–September 2004, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, October 2004–January 2005, Tate Britain, London, February–May 2005 (96, as ‘San Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle from the Giudecca Canal’, 1840, reproduced in colour).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.1021, CCCXVI 40, as ‘Entrance to Venice from Chioggia. 5th Loan Collection, No.1’.
1930
A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, p.174, as ‘S. Giorgio from the Giudecca’, 1835 or 1840.
1839
Henri Verne, Laurence Binyon and Louis Gillet, La Peinture anglaise: XVIIIe & XIXe siècles, exhibition catalogue, Louvre, Paris 1938, p.138 no.248, as ‘Venise, l’entrée de Chioggia’, c.1839.
1840
Lindsay Stainton, Turner’s Venice, London 1985, p. 63 no.84, as ‘S. Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle from the Giudecca’, ?1840, pl.84 (colour).
2003
Ian Warrell in Warrell, David Laven, Jan Morris and others, Turner and Venice, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2003, pp.183, 259, fig.200 (colour), as ‘San Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle from the Giudecca Canal’, 1840.
2004
Sarah Taft in Katharine Lochnan, Luce Abélès, John House and others, TurnerWhistlerMonet, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 2004, p.222 no.96, as ‘San Giorgio Maggiore and the Zitelle from the Giudecca Canal’, 1840, reproduced in colour p.223.
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Entrance to Venice from Chioggia’, the work’s picturesque title as established in the nineteenth century): ‘An absurd title | The canal of the Giudecca with San Giorgio and the Zitelle on the right’.1 In his revised 1930 listing, Finberg gave the subject as ‘S. Giorgio from the Giudecca’.2
The prospect is along or off the Fondamenta della Croce on the Isola della Giudecca, about half way between the churches of the Redentore and the Zitelle, the former being behind the viewpoint, looking east-north-east along the waterfront to the latter on the right. Beyond the Giudecca at the centre are the church and monastery complex of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, with a simplified view of the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront across the Bacino to the north-east, with the dome of San Zaccaria and the slender distant spire of San Francesco della Vigna.
The viewpoint of several contemporary colour studies looking in other directions is similar; compare Tate D32139, D32145 and D32146 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 2, 8, 9). The last looks back to the Redentore, and is in a similar combination of fairly detailed pencil work and warm washes. There are additional touches of black here for the boats moored across the glassy waters, activating the space. Lindsay Stainton has suggested that D32146 and the present work were ‘perhaps even sketched on the same day’ and ‘may also have been coloured on the spot’;3 as Sarah Taft has observed, they ‘hint at the tones of the buildings at a particular moment.’4
D32141 (CCCXVI 4) shows a similar view to the present one, from far enough further off to include the Redentore in the foreground. Ian Warrell has noted them in relation to the oil painting Giudecca, la Donna della Salute and San Georgio, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841 (private collection),5 within a year after this visit; yet ‘he patently did not return to this reference material’, as the Zitelle is shown in the painting with a spurious stretch of roof introduced between the twin bell turrets on the north front and the dome, whereas the immediate juxtaposition shown here is correct.6 The same applies in another exhibit that year, Depositing of John Bellini’s Three Pictures in la Chiesa Redentore, Venice (private collection; engraved in 1858: Tate impression T05192),7 where the Redentore is shown even less accurately (see under D32141).
Technical notes:
The pale washes have been rubbed away from both domes; this highlighting effect is less noticeable than it would have been originally, as the sheet has darkened somewhat owing to prolonged display as part of the touring Fifth Loan Collection selected from the Bequest. A strip of brighter paper and fresher colour is evident down the right-hand edge, which was evidently protected by a mount in those years.
This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as on sheets of ‘white paper produced [under the name] Charles Ansell,1 each measuring around 24 x 30 cm, several watermarked with the date “1828”’:2 Tate D32138–D32139, D32141–D32143, D32145–D32147, D32154–D32163, D32167–D32168, D32170–D32177, D35980, D36190 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 1, 2, 4–6, 8–10, 17–26, 30, 31, 33–40, CCCLXIV 137, 332). Warrell has also observed that The Doge’s Palace and Piazzetta, Venice (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin)3 and Venice: The New Moon (currently untraced)4 ‘may belong to this group’.5
Albeit 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.81, notes that the Muggeridge family had taken over after 1820, still using the ‘C Ansell’ watermark.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘17’ top right; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 40’ over Turner Bequest monogram below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32177’ bottom right.
Matthew Imms
July 2018
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘The Zitelle and San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Venice 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www