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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Views from the Canal of St. Mark’s’): ‘One with S. Giorgio, Salute, Grand Hotel, etc.’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘composite’.2 The drawing was made in two parallel bands with the page turned horizontally, with the lower view likely made first before squeezing in a similarly detailed continuation of the scene to the right at the outer edge. From the precise alignments along the skyline, the viewpoint is along or just off the Viale Giardini Pubblici at what was then almost the end of the long series of quays running south-east from the Riva degli Schiavoni along the Canale di San Marco.

The first feature on the left of the lower sketch is the dome of the Zitelle church on the Isola della Giudecca to the west-south-west beyond the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, the main feature of the left-hand half; the dome is now obscured by buildings and trees from this angle. The dome and campanile of San Giorgio are next, due west, with the twin lighthouses of the island’s northern harbour below. Above the one on the right are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute across the Bacino, with the porch of the Dogana below echoing the form of the lighthouses. A brief gap indicates the entrance of the Grand Canal to the west-north-west, with campanili including the tall Santo Stefano and the pointed San Moisè above the advancing waterfront on the right.

The upper drawing begins on the left with the Zecca (mint) and Libreria Sansoviniana, the two columns at the Molo entrance to the Piazzetta, the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and the domes of San Marco (St Mark’s); the restricted space precluded a detailed study of the basilica’s campanile on this occasion, the presence of its middle stages being indicated only by the first vertical strokes, which could easily be taken as two more of the masts of moored shipping recorded further on. At the centre is the squat campanile of San Zaccaria, with the some of that church rising to its right beyond the incomplete classical façade of the Pietà church on the Riva. An isolated study of a cluster of buildings on folio 15 recto opposite (D31954) may be a further continuation of the right foreground. Compare a double-page drawing of much the same overall view in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14432–D14433; Turner Bequest CLXXV 61a–62).

The present sketch falls within what was perhaps a single waterborne excursion (folios 10 verso–24 recto; D31945–D31972) out towards the Giardini Pubblici and then westwards across the Lagoon along the southern shores of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Giudecca, before turning back for the Bacino along the Canale della Giudecca. There are similar prospects from a little further south-east on folios 15 verso and 16 recto (D31955–D31956), and from further south again on folio 17 verso (D31959). For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,3 see its Introduction.