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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Grand Canal and the Salute’): ‘from the Grand Canal looking East, a wild fantasy’.1 The composition is admittedly rather provisional and indistinct in places, but the juxtaposition of the Baroque domes and campanili of Santa Maria della Salute and the long, low Dogana below to terminating in the distinctive porch overlooking the Bacino and Canale della Giudecca on the left, suggest a rational view to the south-west.

This is effectively a variation of Tate D32166 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 29), a more resolved and detailed contemporary view south across the Grand Canal at twilight from the Hotel Europa (the Palazzo Giustinian), where Turner was staying. Ian Warrell has linked the present work with others demonstrating ‘Turner’s fondness for [the] moorings at the eastern end of the Giudecca canal, on the far side of the point (D32147, D32163, D32170, D32172; CCCXVI 10, 26, 33, 35), ‘some of his most delicate studies of Venice, faintly developed in thinly coloured washes’.2 He has paired it in particular with D32163, from just off the Dogana looking along to the southern end of the church in ‘the softer fading light of the late afternoon’, while here ‘the church is indistinctly shrouded above a sugary pink expanse representing the [Dogana] warehouse buildings, and these evanescent colours give greater vigour to the dark outline of a gondolier plying his craft’3 in the cool, greenish foreground, already enveloped in shadow.

Warrell has noted that ‘the same pink appears’ in D32175 (CCCXVI 38),4 a view north from the Bacino. Leo Costello has discussed this work among others showing energetic gondoliers;5 two are shown here as little more than dots and dashes, yet their characteristic leaning action is immediately conveyed. Turner has scrawled an enigmatic note relating to boats on the verso (D40176). Compare also the sunset scene in the watercolour of The Grand Canal, with Santa Maria della Salute, from near the Hotel Europa,6 where the Salute is shown to more ghostly effect, its domes again catching the last rays from the right.

Technical notes:

There is light pencil work around the Dogana’s porch and the domes of the church, where there is some scratching out to convey bright light from the right. Three curving diagonal depressions or creases are evident in the centre of the foreground, where the swiftly applied, broad washes used for the water caught the edges and left the lowest parts bare. These adventitious elements add further variety to the mottled effect where the wet wash has been lifted, and the loose, darker stokes deftly intermingled to evoke ripples and reflections. Compare another Bacino study, Tate D32171 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 34), where matching ‘faults’ are evident. The sheets are of the same type, as outlined below.

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