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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Shipping on the Riva degli Schiavone’): ‘from near the Ponte dell’Arsenale, sunset’.1 This seems about right in terms of the alignment of the distant landmarks, although there is no specific foreground detail to establish the exact viewpoint. The campanile and dome of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore appear on the left to the south-west across the Canale di San Marco, beyond a cluster of sails and masts; in 1857 John Ruskin declared that the ‘composition of these sails and groups of ships leading the eye into the distance is very beautiful’.2 Silhouetted towards the central glare of what seems to be the sinking sun are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute across the Bacino to the west; and the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) is shown to the west-north-west on the right, as pale, not quite vertical and largely blank, with a few touches of yellow. Ian Warrell has also compared the backdrop of an evening scene (D32150; CCCXVI 13), where, as here, ‘topography is subservient to the general vaporous effect’, particularly in the ‘unresolved’ treatment of the campanile.3

The time of day here is uncertain and presumably would have involved further development and harmonisation, as the campanile would be silhouetted towards evening, whereas its brightness and that of the right-hand side generally implies morning light from behind or beside the viewer. At any event, Finberg was unusually effulgent in his description, albeit with reservations: ‘the colour of the water has become an ecstasy of the most heavenly blue; but it is only a moment of rapture set in a ghostly confusion of shipping, palaces, churches and towers.’4 Elsewhere, he described ‘warm, palpitating light’ towards the right:

Andrew Wilton suggested in more measured terms that this and Tate D32168 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 31), a similar subject, generally ‘make use of a rather cooler colour range than usual’ in the Venice waterfront studies, as compared with D32155 or D32158 (CCCXVI 18, 21) for example, and ‘detail is very slightly and nervously indicated’.6 In discussing Shipping, with Buildings, ?Venice (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),7 a loose colour study on grey paper, Malcolm Cormack described it as ‘particularly close in handling’ to the present work.8

Warrell described the present study as among those likely derived from Canaletto’s panoramic Bacino compositions.9 He has noted Ruskin’s grouping of ‘a series of views along the rambling Riva degli Schiavoni, which suggests that Turner explored its length by foot, as well as from the water’: Tate D32120 (Turner Bequest CCCXV 4) from the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook, and D32157–D32160 (CCCXVI 20–23) in the present grouping,10 to which Warrell added D32167 (CCCXVI 30) and D32168 (also discussed above),11 linked by ‘the brilliant sunshine refracted by the surface of the Bacino’.12

There is an anonymous copy of the present work in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery, London.13

Technical notes:

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

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘56’ top left and ‘20’ bottom left, upside down; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 20’ over Turner Bequest monogram below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXVI.20’ towards bottom right.