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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice: The Grand Canal > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Grand Canal, Venice, near the Palazzi Grimani and Papadopoli, with the Rialto Bridge Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, near the Palazzi Grimani and Papadopoli, with the Rialto Bridge Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Grand Canal, Venice, near the Palazzi Grimani and Papadopoli, with the Rialto Bridge Beyond 1840
D32211
Turner Bequest CCCXVII 26
Chalk, pencil and watercolour on pale buff wove paper, 228 x 307 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1590’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVII – 26’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Rialto’): ‘with P. Grimani, &c. on r. ? study for Mr Brocklebank’s “Shylock.”’ (as discussed below).1 Turner’s viewpoint was about level with the Calle Traghetto Vecchio on the south side of the Grand Canal, looking north-east to the Rialto Bridge and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi at the bend beyond. On the left is the Palazzo Papadopoli, with its twin obelisk finials, with the lower Palazzo Giustiniani Businello to its right.
Above the roofs south of the bridge is the campanile of San Bartolomeo. The tallest of the buildings shown complete on that side is the Palazzo Grimani di San Luca, now Venice’s Appeal Court. Coming forwards below it are the Palazzi Corner Contarini dei Cavalli, Tron and D’Anna Viaro Martinengo Volpi di Misurata, with details of the latter two fading out towards the right-hand edge. The scene is much the same as in a more finished watercolour and gouache view on grey paper (Tate D32212; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 27), likely also from 1840;2 there the focus shifts to the right, with the right foreground in more detail and the Palazzo Papadopoli excluded from the left. The handling in the present variation appears more immediate, suggesting rapid observation of the fall of light and shadow (compare Tate D32149 and D32169; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 12, 32, also in this subsection).
The view evoked various associations for Turner, and is effectively the same that in a detailed pencil study in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14455–D14456; Turner Bequest CLXXV 73, 74). That prospect had been used for a watercolour, The Rialto, Venice (Indianapolis Museum of Art),3 made in 1820 or 1821 for Turner’s friend and patron Walter Fawkes. Its composition echoed that of a watercolour (currently untraced),4 engraved in 1820 for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy (Tate impression: T06012) as The Rialto, Venice, based on Hakewill’s own sketch. These works had also informed the upright-format oil painting The Grand Canal, Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837 (Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California).5 As noted above, Finberg had tentatively linked the present sheet to the painting (featuring Shylock, from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice), although it is now accepted as post-dating the oil, so any intentional similarity would have been retrospective.6
Without further elaboration, in 1881 John Ruskin categorised this work among twenty-five Turner Bequest subjects ‘chiefly in Venice. Late time, extravagant, and showing some of the painter’s worst and final faults; but also, some of his peculiar gifts in a supreme degree.’7
1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1025; see also Finberg 1930, p.175.
2
See Finberg 1930, p.175, and Warrell 2003, pp.151, 264 note 11.
3
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.383 no.718, pl.156.
4
Ibid., p.381 no.700.
5
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.219–20 no.368, pl.373 (colour).
6
See Warrell 2003, p.151.
7
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.384.
Technical notes:
Details at the right-hand side are worked right up to the somewhat irregular edge. Owing to prolonged early display, the sheet is considerably darkened except where the edges were protected by a mount.
This is one of a few 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as on ‘Pale buff wove paper, produced by an unknown maker, with the watermark: “J W”’:1 Tate D32148–D32149, D32169, D32211, D32219, D32247 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 11, 12, 32, CCCXVII 26, 34, CCCXVIII 28); see also Venice from the Lagoon (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),2 and The Rialto, Venice and The Palazzo Balbi on the Grand Canal, Venice (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).3 Warrell has noted paper conservator Peter Bower’s suggestion ‘that this type of paper was a deliberate forgery of Whatman paper and was possibly produced in Austria’,4 and that the ‘inferior quality has resulted in visible changes to the paper, which is especially prone to fading’.5
1
‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, section 4) in Warrell 2003, p.259.
2
Wilton 1979, p.464 no.1362, reproduced.
3
Ibid., respectively p.464 no.1369, reproduced, p.465 no.1372, reproduced.
4
See 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.110 under no.63.
5
Warrell 2003, p.259.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘D32211’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, near the Palazzi Grimani and Papadopoli, with the Rialto Bridge Beyond 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-grand-canal-venice-near-the-palazzi-grimani-and-r1196445, accessed 21 November 2024.