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

Albeit presenting a coherent and convincing vista, this is a composite, considerably compressed and idealised view. The campanile of San Marco is aligned above the Zecca and Libreria Sansoviniana, seen from the south (from near the Zitelle) across the Bacino, but the porch of the Dogana, towards the left with the campanile of San Moisè above it and the Seminario Patriarcale in steep recession towards it at the left-hand edge, has been brought in a long way from the west.

Although the perspective effect of the nearer buildings is not so pronounced here, and other details differ significantly, the general effect is immediately reminiscent of one of Turner’s first oil paintings of the city, Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1833 (Tate N00370),1 just prior to the second of his three stays. At a time when the dates of the visits had yet to be firmly established, Jerrold Ziff even proposed the present sheet as a preparatory study for the painting,2 whereas Ian Warrell has implied that it was executed (at least in part) directly in front of the subject, as a reprise of the composition: ‘Turner located the precise spot he had attempted to depict on one of his subsequent visits, and was presumably forced to recognise that his perspective in the painting was flawed’; this version ‘gives a much more accurate idea of how the architectural elements come together’.3 Compare Tate D32206 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 21) in this subsection, a less distorted impression of the Dogana from a similar viewpoint near the Zitelle, as an extended version of the left-hand side here centred on the domes of Santa Maria della Salute above the Seminario.

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Ducal Palace and Campanile’): ‘no scaffolding on cuspide’.4 The evidence of building work around the spire is a key pointer for other views belonging to 1840 (see the Introduction to the tour); Lindsay Stainton, provisionally associating this sheet with that year, suggested that ‘Turner probably just decided to omit it’ from ‘one of his favourite views’.5 In discussing a grey paper watercolour of Burg Hals, which Turner visited on his 1840 return route through Austria and Germany (Tate D28997; Turner Bequest CCXCII 49), Cecilia Powell has compared its ‘clear blue and turquoise green’ with those used for the present sheet.6 For her technical linking and dating of the German 1840 subjects with particular Venice sheets, see the Introduction to the tour, and for the uncertainty of the dating of this and a few other sheets in relation to 1833 or 1840, see the subsection Introduction.

Among the sheets gathered in this subsection, this and Tate D32209 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 24) are respectively inscribed in pencil ‘8 V’ and ‘6 V’, seemingly in sequence with several other Venice watercolours associated with 1840, although whether they were potentially intended as a formal series or when these numbers were applied is unclear; again, see the Introduction to the tour.

Technical notes:

As discussed in the Introduction to this subsection, in the context of Turner’s 1833 Continental tour including Venice, Ian Warrell has noted his use of grey paper by Bally, Ellen and Steart,1 ‘from at least four different batches’, and it is ‘possible’ that Tate D32205–D32210 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 20–25), including the present subject, relate to that occasion,2 or 1840, when similar paper was used extensively (see Tate D32180–D32181, D32183–D32184, D32200–D32201, D32203–D32204, D32212, D32215, D32217, D33883; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 1, 2, 4, 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 27–30, 32, CCCXLI 183).3

Verso:

Blank save for what appears to be a stroke of yellow colour at the centre left; inscribed in pencil ‘21’ above right of centre, ascending vertically; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVII – 20’ and inscribed in pencil ‘D32205 towards bottom left.