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

Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Entrance Grand Canal, with Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore on left’): ‘S. Giorgio, with Dogana & Salute; entrance Grand Canal on right’.1 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, with the Salute, the Dogana and the Entrance to the Grand Canal’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.2

The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, from the same viewpoint near the Ponte della Veneta Marina used for the view on folio 10 verso opposite (D31945) focusing on the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), where the bridge appears in the right foreground; the present sketch continues that prospect to the left, looking west across the Canale di San Marco to the south-eastern entrance to the Grand Canal and the domes of the Salute above the Dogana towards the right, with the profile of the Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Granda a little further off on the opposite side. In the distance between them is the campanile of San Trovaso.

Towards the south-west on the left are the church of San Giorgio and the lighthouse at the western end of the island’s harbour, flanking the north side of the church; its counterpart at the eastern end is shown on the verso (D31947), which extends the view a little way to the left again.

The present sketch falls within what was perhaps a single waterborne excursion (folios 10 verso–24 recto; D31945–D31972) out towards the Giardini Pubblici at the eastern end of Venice and then westwards across the Lagoon along the southern shores of the islands of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Giudecca, before turning back for the Bacino at the heart of the city along the Canale della Giudecca. For this sketchbook’s general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,3 see its Introduction.