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

This atmospheric night scene shows the view north up the Rio del Palazzo from off the Bacino, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on left and New prisons on right, linked by the enclosed high-level Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri). The actual proportions of the space beneath the bridge are approximately square, so the height to the arch and the narrowness of the canal are correspondingly manipulated here to claustrophobic effect.1

Turner had first recorded the bridge in the distance along the canyon-like canal from the other direction in the 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14388; Turner Bequest CLXXV 39a). His vignette watercolour of about 1830 (private collection)2 was engraved in 1832 for Lord Byron’s Life and Works (Tate impression: T06650) as a romantic night scene, again looking towards the Bacino, and strongly lit by a low full moon over the water. Among several of showing the bridge in the 1833 Venice sketchbook, there is a detailed pencil drawing from the south (Tate D31985; Turner Bequest CCCXIV 30a).

Compare also views below the bridge in the first drawing of the Venice sequence in the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice book (Tate D32412–D32413; Turner Bequest CCCXIX 76a–77) and, probably among the last he made in the city, Tate D31309 (Turner Bequest CCCX 17) in the Venice; Passau to Würzburg book. There are also two related pencil views on a folded sheet in the present grouping (Tate D32196–D32197; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 14a, b). The bridge had featured prominently in the title, if less so in the composition, of the oil painting Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1833 (Tate N00370),3 and earlier in 1840 Turner had shown Venice, the Bridge of Sighs (Tate N00527),4 where it is indeed the focal point.

Lindsay Stainton saw what ‘seems to be more than a coincidental relationship’ with William Etty’s (1787–1849) highly finished painting The Bridge of Sighs, shown at the Academy in 1835 (York Museums Trust).5 Ian Warrell has concurred, noting that one of Turner’s exhibits that year was numbered consecutively with Etty’s and would thus have been hung close by.6 The rigorously detailed view also exaggerates the proportionate height and narrowness, and is lit by strong moonlight from the top left, casting deep shadows and brightly illuminating most of the near side of the bridge and the upper part of the prison. Meanwhile, the body of a criminal is brought out to the water at the shadowy bottom right to be tipped into the Lagoon, with ‘a single star ... looking down upon the dark deeds below’, in the works of the painting’s first owner.7 Stainton suggested that the ‘same incident can just be made out’ in Turner’s scene,8 although there is little more than criss-cross strokes of white at the equivalent point, which may be random, or signify his recollection of the figures in Etty’s painting.9

Turner also shows a central star over the bridge, but adds a constellation to its right and plunges the bridge into darkness, intensified by a pinprick of light from one of its heavily grilled windows. Anne Lyles has observed how the ‘barred windows of the prison to the right are brilliantly suggested by a few calligraphic strokes, almost resembling the characters of oriental scripts.’10 Compare the prominent architectural details in the foreground of a contemporary watercolour of San Simeone Piccolo in the Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32124; Turner Bequest CCCXV 8).

Warrell has noted that the bridge had become ‘a highly charged subject, resonating with Byron’s sense of it as a conduit between two states of fortune, but also carried sombre associations of injustice and ignominy’.11 Nevertheless, Lyles has called this ‘one of the most lyrical of all Turner’s Venetian bodycolour [gouache] sketches of this date’,12 while Margaret Plant has suggested:

Within the present grouping, compare two other night scenes with bridges (Tate D32242–D32243; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 23, 24); an evocative study along another narrow canal, between the high walls of the Arsenale (D32164; CCCXVI 27), shares a centralised focus, with enigmatic figures on and around a bridge.

Technical notes:

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as being on ‘Grey-brown paper produced by an unknown maker (possibly ... a batch made at Fabriano [Italy])’;1 for numerous red-brown Fabriano sheets used for similar subjects, see for example under Tate D32224 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5).

Warrell noted the grey-brown sheets as being torn into two formats: nine sheets of approximately 148 x 232 mm (Tate D32220, D32249–D32250, D32252–D32253, D32255–D32258; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 1, CCCXIX 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–10), and seven of twice the size, at about 231 x 295 mm (Tate D32223, D32226, D32228–D32229, D32231, D32233, D32242 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 23).

Verso:

Blank. A pale, steeply diagonal line towards the top left marks an old crease, since flattened out; there is a less conspicuous trace at the corresponding point on the recto, towards the top right. Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘3’ bottom left, ascending vertically; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXIX.5’ bottom right. For Turner’s ink numbers on the backs of Venice sheets, see the Introduction to the tour.