The Camden Town Group in Context

... ; Mrs Robert Campbell; her sale Christie’s, London, 8 December 1922 (89, as ‘Venice and the Old Campanile’), bought for 18 guineas by S.C. Cockerill; sold Christie’s, 27 April 1923 (11), bought Rance, and afterwards acquired by Tate Gallery.

The Piazzetta and the Old Campanile, Venice is a carbon paper tracing with pastel on laid paper. The technique and execution of this work are similar to the other two Tate works on paper executed in Dieppe by Walter Sickert (Tate N05094 and N05096). The paper is light weight and off-white in tone and the drawing has a grainy quality, particularly in the sky and lagoon area, suggestive of a transfer technique. The drawing covers almost the full extent of this rectangular paper sheet, but the edges of the carbon paper, used to transfer the compositional elements from a previous sketch or sketches, are just visible along the edges, forming a black rectangle.

After the carbon tracing, peach, blue, green, red and purple pastels were applied to colour and emphasise certain elements of the image, including the architecture, sky and lagoon. Cross-hatching was applied on top of the pastel in a black graphic medium, possibly using the carbon paper or working directly onto the paper pencil, to suggest depth in the sky and certain architectural features. Although this work has a sketch-like quality, the lines are not loose but very controlled and the architectural features are carefully proportioned, reflecting Sickert’s planning process.

Walter Sickert made this transfer image using typewriter carbon paper and finished it with pastel. Whether he was investigating some form of producing multiples is unknown, but it is an intriguing possibility. However, no similar carbon drawing of The Piazzetta and the Old Campanile, Venice is known, or the original. Being able to manufacture several drawings simultaneously would save considerable time, and hand-finishing would make certain their status as original works. It was a way of working that artists had used in the past, albeit not with the new and modern material of carbon paper. In the eighteenth century, for instance, Thomas Rowlandson had combined printing with a form of graphite medium to imitate original drawing, and then hand-coloured the results. Also related, and undoubtedly known to Sickert, was Edgar Degas’s practice of making multiple traced images, applying pastel over the top and nuancing every image, so that each was wholly individual.1

Whether Sickert based the drawing on first-hand sketches is unknown. If it was, then these would have had to have been made from the vantage point of a boat. However, it is such a classic Venetian view that it is possible that Sickert simply drew it from postcards or guidebooks. Sickert certainly used such source material, and in a letter to Mrs Humphrey in 1899 he mentioned how, in London, he used ‘photographs of sitters and photographs of Venice’.2 The relatively large size of The Piazzetta and the Old Campanile, Venice raises the possibility that, in addition to being a carbon copy drawing, it was scaled up using a pantograph, a drawing instrument that can also be used to trace from photographs, for instance. The smudgy areas in the sky suggest that Sickert may have deliberately rubbed the carbon paper to create this effect, giving it texture and shading.

Traditionally, the drawing has been dated to c.1901, when Sickert was in Venice from January to July. However, there is no particular evidence for this. Sickert would return to a subject or motif at almost any time in his life. He made etchings of Venice in c.1902, such as Venice, The Façade of St Mark’s,3 which reproduces his painting St Mark’s, Venice (‘Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus’) of 1896–7 (Tate N05914). But, as late as 1915, he made another group of etchings of the city, including Venice, The Lion of St Mark’s,4 which similarly utilised work he had made twenty years before. The bright colouring of Tate’s drawing would seem to count against such an early dating of 1901. Indeed, the dominant dazzling blue and the slightly fuzzy application seems to have more relation with works from the early 1920s, such as the oil painting Baccarat 1920 (private collection),5 or, equally, it might date from Sickert’s second campaign of Venetian printmaking in 1915.

Sickert made three oil paintings that are closely related to The Piazzetta and the Old Campanile, Venice.6 Essentially they are the same composition but painted under slightly different lighting conditions. One of them, for instance, is a nocturne, Le Palais des Doges au Crépuscule, Venice 1901 (private collection).7 In each oil the architectural drawing and, crucially, its scale are near identical to the Tate drawing. This must indicate some association between the carbon drawing and these oils. It is possible that Sickert used carbon paper to transfer his design in some way onto the canvas itself, and do away with the necessity of squaring up. Another related oil is The Doge’s Palace and the Campanile, Venice 1900 (private collection),8 although here the viewpoint is from slightly further away.