Joseph Mallord William Turner The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, across the Bacino from the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, across the Bacino from the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) 1840
D32148
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 11
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 11
Gouache and watercolour on pale buff wove paper, 226 x 300 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘11’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI 11’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘11’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI 11’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1975
Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London, May 1975–February 1976 (251, as ‘Venice: The Canale di S. Marco’, 1840, reproduced).
2003
Turner and Venice, Tate Britain, London, October 2003–January 2004, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, February–May 2004, Museo Correr, Venice, September 2004–January 2005, Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona, March–June 2005 (147, as ‘Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore’, 1840, reproduced in colour).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.1018, CCCXVI 11, as ‘View on a canal’.
1930
A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, p.173, as ‘The Ducal Palace and Campanile from S. Giorgio’, 1835.
1974
Andrew Wilton in Martin Butlin, Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.154.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 1975, pp.138 under nos.228 and 229, 142 under no.239, 143 under 241, 146 no.251, as ‘Venice: The Canale di S. Marco’, 1840, reproduced.
1976
Andrew Wilton in Werner Hofmann, Wilton, Siegmar Hosten and others, William Turner und die Landschaft seiner Zeit, exhibition catalogue, Hamburger Kunsthalle 1976, p.148.
1982
Andrew Wilton, Turner Abroad: France; Italy; Germany; Switzerland, London 1982, p.60 under no.83.
1983
Andrew Wilton in John Gage, Jerrold Ziff, Nicholas Alfrey and others, J.M.W. Turner, à l’occasion du cinquantième anniversaire du British Council, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris 1983, p.287 under no.232.
2003
Ian Warrell in Warrell, David Laven, Jan Morris and others, Turner and Venice, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2003, pp.198, 204, 259, 273 no.147, as ‘Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore’, 1840, fig.214 (colour).
2005
Ian Warrell, Cecilia Powell and David Laven, Turner i Venècia, exhibition catalogue, Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona 2005, p.163 no.94, as ‘Illa de San Giorgio Maggiore’, 1840, reproduced in colour.
Topographically speaking, this is one of the slightest Venetian views in the present grouping, and was taken by Finberg to represent the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) looking north across the Bacino from the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore.1 Without disputing this, Andrew Wilton called it an ‘unusually schematized view ... in which the buildings are a blank strip between the washes of blue and green’, and ‘less atmospheric and more explicitly concerned with composition’ than other Venetian watercolours.2
Ian Warrell has characterised the ‘almost wanton attitude to the specifics of topography, so that the man-made constructions ... float as the intermediate zone in three bands of colour’, albeit suggesting that it is unfinished, ‘a circumstance which has hitherto prevented the correct identification of the scene’ as the island of San Giorgio itself, with its church and campanile, seen to the south-east across the Bacino from the direction of the Hotel Europa3 (the Palazzo Giustinian), where Turner was staying; see the Introduction to this subsection. The church would have been visible both directly from his elevated room (see Tate D32219; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 34) and from the Grand Canal entrance of the hotel.
On close examination, Warrell’s identification is corroborated by the presence of four slight verticals across the pale wash to the right of the tower, corresponding with the engaged columns on San Giorgio’s entrance front below its central dome, as seen frequently in Turner’s pencil sketches; compare also the contemporary colour study, Tate D32165 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 28). Warrell has linked the present sheet with a more finished view north across the Bacino from south-west of the church (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)4 on similar paper (see the technical notes below): ‘Both share the same palette, most notably for the diluted green of the Lagoon, and they were evidently painted in the same session.’5 He has also noted that the lines beginning to articulate the forms here were added with a pen dipped in watercolour,6 and speculated that had this been taken further the effect could have been similar to that in a view of San Giorgio from the east (also Fitzwilliam Museum),7 with its delicate web of dark red detail.8
Technical notes:
Further to the discussion of technique above, no pencil is evident, while a little opaque white was added to the tower on the left and the dome towards the right. The perfunctory reflection of the campanile was initially reserved. There is some mottled staining at the top right and down that edge, perhaps connected with the 1928 Tate Gallery flood, and also evident on the verso.
In the section of his 1909 Inventory listing Venice subjects on ‘White paper, &c.’, Finberg differentiated the Venice studies Tate D32148–D32152 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 11–15) as ‘on a slightly yellowish coarse’1 support which he later described as ‘sugar-loaf paper’.2 Among them, 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”’:3 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; discussed in the main catalogue entry above),4 and The Rialto, Venice and The Palazzo Balbi on the Grand Canal, Venice (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).5 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’,6 and that the ‘inferior quality has resulted in visible changes to the paper, which is especially prone to fading’.7
Finberg 1909, II, p.1018; see also Wilton 1974, p.154, and Wilton 1975, pp.138, 142, 143, 146 (adding Tate D32153; CCCXVI 16), Wilton 1976, p.148, Wilton 1982, p.60, and Wilton 1983, p.287.
‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, section 4) in Warrell 2003, p.259.
Verso:
Blank, with dark irregular patches at the top left and along the top edge, possibly dating from the 1928 Tate Gallery flood (see also the technical notes above); stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 11’ over Turner Bequest monogram below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘D32148’ bottom right.
Matthew Imms
September 2018
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, across the Bacino from the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) 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