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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Grand Canal and Giudecca Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Canale della Giudecca, Venice, at Sunset, with the Lagoon towards Fusina 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Canale della Giudecca, Venice, at Sunset, with the Lagoon towards Fusina’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Canale della Giudecca, Venice, at Sunset, with the Lagoon towards Fusina 1840
D32129
Turner Bequest CCCXV 13
Pencil, watercolour and crayon on white wove paper, 221 x 323 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXV 13’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In 1857, John Ruskin described the subject as ‘Looking up the Giudecca. Sunset’, and limited his direct commentary to declaring it: ‘The original sketch of the oil picture of “San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina.”’1 In the same year, he wrote at length about that painting, which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843 (Tate N00534):2
“San Benedetto” is a mistake of Turner’s; there being no church nor quarter belonging to that saint on either side of the Giudecca, or in any possible way included in this view ... and the only way of accounting for the title given, is that Turner might have half remembered the less frequently occurring name of St. Biagio, under whose protection the “fondamenta” – or block of houses on the left of this picture – with some spacious barracks, are verily placed. St. Biagio has no church, however; ... The buildings on the right are also, for the most part, imaginary in their details ... and yet, without one single accurate detail, the picture is the likest thing to what it is meant for – the looking out of the Giudecca landwards, at sunset – of all that I have ever seen. The buildings have, in reality, that proportion and character of mass, as one glides up the centre of the tide stream: they float exactly in that strange, mirage-ful, wistful way in the sea mist – rosy ghosts of houses without foundations; the blue line of poplars and copse about the Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the horizon; the flowing gold of the water, and quiet gold of the air, face and reflect each other just so; the boats rest so, with their black prows poised in the midst of the amber flame, or glide by so, the boatman stretched far aslope upon his deep-laid oar.3
He regarded the painting as ‘all in all ... the best Venetian picture of Turner’s which he has left to us’.4
Ruskin had mentioned San Biagio, and Ian Warrell has identified ‘the shell of the deconsecrated church of Santi Biagio e Cataldo’ silhouetted on the left; a complementary view towards the city in this sketchbook shows the same building on the right (Tate D32128: Turner Bequest CCCXV 12).5 See under the latter for details of the subsequently demolished convent and its situation, where the Molino Stucky mill and factory complex6 (now a hotel) stands on the Fondamenta San Biagio. Warrell has linked the two colour studies featuring it with two others in this sketchbook, perhaps showing the waterfront around Santa Marta (D32125–D32126; CCCXV 9, 10), on the north side (to the right here) at this then relatively quiet western end of the Canale della Giudecca, since much developed with consequent complications in identifying the settings.7 There may be a connection with waterfront pencil sketches of the vicinity in the contemporary Venice and Botzen sketchbook (Tate D31852; Turner Bequest CCCXIII 32); the upper view there, with the sun setting beyond buildings on the north side of the canal, is comparable with the right-hand side of the present composition.
The close (albeit far from exact) relationship between this work and the 1843 San Benedetto painting has often been mentioned since;8 as Warrell has noted, ‘it is unlikely that Turner was entirely dependent on this study for a view he knew so well. Moreover, the view in the painting is more distant and includes a wider range of buildings on either side’,9 and there are various differences in the arrangement of the boats.10 Discussing the painting Venice – Sunset, a Fisher, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1845 (Tate N00542),11 which may show elements of the Giudecca waterfront, Warrell suggested that it was ‘entirely possible that he was playing with motifs recorded in his sketchbooks and reassembling them in arrangements that suited his own fancy’, noting a ‘similar divergence between Turner’s informal graphic work and its public expression’12 here.
Warrell has noted that Turner here ‘faces the sun as it sets over Fusina. Its glaring light reduces the buildings along either side of the Giudecca canal to flattened silhouettes, at the same time gilding the improbably dramatic peaks of the Dolomites’; the sun’s ‘centrality’ is ‘harking back to the example of Claude Lorrain’s Seaports, to which Turner remained devoted throughout his life.’13 For Claude (1604/5–1682), see the Introduction to the selection of sun studies in the ‘Colour Studies of the Sun, Skies and Clouds c.1815–45’ section of this catalogue.14
Although the artist habitually made more or less recognisable ‘colour beginnings’ in relation to his finished watercolours (see for instance the ‘England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825–39’ section), it is unusual for a watercolour composition in such an advanced stage of development to be linked so clearly to an oil painting; only a handful of Turner Bequest colour studies are suggested as working material for miscellaneous paintings in the present author’s ‘Studies Related to Oil Paintings c.1819–46’ section. While the Venice watercolours now associated with the present tour are generally by convention dated to the year itself or as circa 1840, Lindsay Stainton has gone so far as to wonder if this one ‘was painted during the 1840 visit to Venice or whether it should be dated rather later, when Turner was working on the composition of S. Benedetto ... As Andrew Wilton has pointed out, the technique of this drawing, with its mixture of watercolour and chalk, shares similarities with several of the Swiss drawings of around 1841.’15
John Gage observed that among the various modes employed in this sketchbook, D32134–D32137 (CCCXV 18–21) ‘are in a muted range of greens and browns which seem to come from a direct experience of the subject’, whereas D32127–D32130 (CCCXV 11–14) ‘have a far more complex technique and brilliant colouring; which suggests that perhaps both modes were used interchangeably for indoor work.’16 This is symptomatic of the general issue of Turner’s direct use of colour outdoors, generally a moot point in his Venice work as it is for many other subjects, however immediate their effect.17 The art historian J.E. Phythian included this work among other Venetian studies he called ‘brilliant in light and colour’ and ‘impressionistic’ in the broadest sense,18 but in this instance the colour and effect are likely wholly products of recollection and imagination. Andrew Wilton considered the present work ‘very similar in mood and treatment’ to D33120, D32127 and D32128 (CCCXV 4, 11, 12),19 and also compared its ‘style and palette’ with those of Tate D32153 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 16),20 The Approach to Venice (itself closely connected with a version in oils), with its similar ‘rather sharp, rough treatment of details’.21
In 1933, together with an 1841 view of Lake Geneva (Tate D36122; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 274), this was one of two Turner Bequest watercolours exhibited in Copies by Sir Herbert Jekyll (1846–1932) at the British Museum, alongside Jekyll’s interpretations; the brother of the renowned garden designer Gertrude, he had a varied career as a military engineer, civil servant, artist and architect.22 An apparently fairly faithful copy was in the Indianapolis collection of Kurt Panzer in 1963, when it was described as a ‘replica’;23 Pantzer also owned an oil copy of the 1843 painting, by James Baker Pyne (1800–1870).24
1
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.215.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.254 no.406, pl.411 (colour).
3
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, pp.164–6; partly quoted and paraphrased in Warrell 1995, pp.114–15.
4
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.166.
5
Warrell 2003, p.194; see also p.188.
6
See also Warrell 1995, p.114.
7
Warrell 2003, p.188.
8
See Butlin 1962, p.66, Wilton 1974, p.153, Wilton 1979, p.212, Wilton 1982, p.60, Butlin and Joll 1984, p.254, Stainton 1985, p.55, Upstone 1993, p.39, Warrell 1995, p.114, Herrmann 2001, p.363, Warrell 2003, p.194, and Moorby 2014, p.115.
9
Warrell 1995, p.114.
10
See Warrell 2003, p.194.
11
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.264 no.419, pl.423.
12
Warrell 2003, p.194.
13
Ibid., p.194; see also Warrell 2012, p.131.
14
See also Ian Warrell, Blandine Chavanne and Michael Kitson, Turner et le Lorrain, exhibition catalogue, Musée des beaux-arts, Nancy 2002.
15
Stainton 1985, p.56; for the latter point, see Wilton 1975, p.142; see also Upstone 1993, p.39.
16
Gage 1969, p.39.
17
See Sam Smiles, ‘Open air, work in’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.205–7.
18
Phythian 1910, p.104.
19
Wilton 1975, p.139; see also p.142.
20
Ibid., p.143.
21
Ibid., p.142; see also Wilton 1977, p.81.
22
See homepage of Gertrude Jekyll: The Official Website of the Jekyll Estate, accessed 17 July 2018, http://gertrudejekyll.co.uk/.
23
Pantzer 1963, p.50 no.47, reproduced in monochrome; not in Martin F. Krause, Turner in Indianapolis: The Pantzer Collection of Drawings and Watercolors by J.M.W. Turner and his Contemporaries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis 1997.
24
Pantzer 1963, p.52 no.49.
Technical notes:
The vertical trail of the sun’s brilliant reflection has been washed out of the sea, some way to the right of the brightest point washed out among the orange clouds. The full range of media has been described as ‘pencil, watercolour, and bodycolour [gouache] with coloured crayons’.1
1
Warrell 2003, p.272; see also p.215.
Verso:
Blank, save for broad adjacent colour test strokes in strong purple and orange, and more dilute washes of the same or similar colours, towards the bottom right; colour from the purple stroke seems to have been smeared across the orange using a finger tip, as there appears to be a partial finger mark; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXV 13’ towards bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXV . 13’ bottom centre.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Canale della Giudecca, Venice, at Sunset, with the Lagoon towards Fusina 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.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-canale-della-giudecca-venice-at-sunset-with-the-lagoon-r1196840, accessed 31 October 2024.