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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Southern Germany, Austria and Venice ... > Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Bridge of Sighs, New Prisons and Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo), Venice, beyond Boats on the Bacino 1833

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), Bridge of Sighs, New Prisons and Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo), Venice, beyond Boats on the Bacino’ 1833
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Recto:
The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Bridge of Sighs, New Prisons and Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo), Venice, beyond Boats on the Bacino 1833
D31943
Turner Bequest CCCXIV 9
Pencil on white laid paper, 109 x 203 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in black ink ‘9’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIV – 9’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Shipping at quay’): ‘off Riva – D’s Pal Prison, &c’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Doges’ Palace, Bridge of Sighs &c from the Canale di San Marco’.2 He also added a similar phrase to a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner.3 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Doge’s Palace, the Bridge of Sighs and the New Prisons, with the Hotel Danieli, Seen beyond a Group of Boats’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.4
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, looking northwards to the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront from the Bacino, with the barely articulated eastern half of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the left and the Ponte della Paglia below it with the elevated Bridge of Sighs over the Rio del Palazzo beyond, crossing to the New Prisons, with five of their seven ground-floor arches lightly indicated. The other prominent building is the Gothic Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo) on the right, by the Ponte del Vin; the inconspicuous lower buildings in the intervening space have been replaced by the regular façade of a modern block with a roofline slightly higher than the Danieli’s. The drawing effectively continues from the right of folio 8 verso opposite (D31942), which centres on the Piazzetta and shows the other half of the Doge’s Palace on its right.
Ian Warrell has linked folios 5 verso, 24 verso, 29 recto and 30 verso (D31936, D31973, D31982, D31985), to the oil painting of Venice, the Bridge of Sighs, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840 (Tate N00527),5 which shows the view directly down the Rio del Palazzo near its centre, notionally from some way out on the Bacino;6 as he has noted,7 the present sketch shows the same elements from a slightly different angle. For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,8 see its Introduction.
1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1013; see also Finberg 1930, p.168.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1013.
3
Undated MS note by Bell in copy of A.J. Finberg, In Venice with Turner, London 1930, Study Room, British Museum, London, p.168, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (Tate cataloguing files, as ‘before 1936’).
4
Noted October 2003 in Tate registrars’ files.
5
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.235 no.383, pl.386 (colour).
6
See Warrell 2003, pp.116, 263 note 39.
7
Draft notes of 2010–11, Tate cataloguing files.
8
See George 1984, pp.13–15.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
May 2019

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace), Bridge of Sighs, New Prisons and Hotel Danieli (Palazzo Dandolo), Venice, beyond Boats on the Bacino 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-palazzo-ducale-doges-palace-bridge-of-sighs-new-prisons-r1203621, accessed 24 November 2024.