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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Venice from the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici, with Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, the Campanili of Santo Stefano, San Moisè and the Frari, and the Campanile and Domes of San Marco (St Mark's) beyond the Canale di San Marco 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Venice from the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici, with Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, the Campanili of Santo Stefano, San Moisè and the Frari, and the Campanile and Domes of San Marco (St Mark's) beyond the Canale di San Marco’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
Venice from the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici, with Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, the Campanili of Santo Stefano, San Moisè and the Frari, and the Campanile and Domes of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond the Canale di San Marco 1833
D31956
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 16
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘16’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 16’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his rather misleading 1909 Inventory entry (‘Entrance Grand Canal’): ‘Salute & Dogana, with Ducal Pal. & Camp., from Giudecca’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘from San Biagio’.2 He also noted in a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner: ‘Canale de San Marco looking west from San Biagio’.3 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘View across the Bacino to Venice from near the Public Gardens’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.4 The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
As Warrell implied, the viewpoint is somewhat further from the centre of the city than the quays around San Biagio suggested by Bell; folio 10 verso (D31945) and adjacent pages show the view from that point. The balustrades and steps where gondolas likely including Turner’s own are moored in the foreground here are those of the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici, and survive in much the same form today. Trees near the gardens’ entrance are seen here on the right, serving to frame the distant prospect centred on the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) to the west-north-west.
At the far left are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute and the porch of the Dogana across the Bacino at the entrance to the Grand Canal; next, on the north side of the canal, are the campanili of Santo Stefano, San Moisè, and the distant Frari. The waterfront advances to the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), with the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) aligned above its south front, and the basilica’s domes a little further to the right. The rest of the skyline is generalised until reaching the cluster of buildings in the middle distance at the right.
Compare the views from nearby on folios 14 verso, 15 verso opposite (possibly from the same spot) and 17 verso (D31953, D31955, D31959), from various distinct points in front of the gardens, at the eastern end of Venice. The sketches fall within what was perhaps a single largely waterborne excursion (folios 10 verso–24 recto; D31945–D31972) out that way, and then westwards across the Lagoon along the southern shores of the islands of San Giorgio and the Giudecca, before turning back for the Bacino at the heart of the city along the Canale della Giudecca. For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,5 see its Introduction.

Matthew Imms
May 2019

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1013; see also Finberg 1930, p.169.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1013.
3
Undated MS note by Bell in copy of Finberg 1930, Study Room, British Museum, London, p.169, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (Tate cataloguing files, as ‘before 1936’).
4
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
5
See George 1984, pp.13–15.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Venice from the Viale dei Giardini Pubblici, with Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, the Campanili of Santo Stefano, San Moisè and the Frari, and the Campanile and Domes of San Marco (St Mark’s) beyond the Canale di San Marco 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-venice-from-the-viale-dei-giardini-pubblici-with-santa-maria-r1203634, accessed 24 November 2024.