Joseph Mallord William Turner

The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Folios 59 recto and verso, 60 verso and 61 recto (D14427–D14428, D14430–D14431) form a continuous panoramic west view across the Bacino, from the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore to the south to the Riva San Biagio to the north; Turner would have had to temporarily turn back D14430 and D14428 to match their outer edges to the points were the overall view continued.1

Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory for this page (‘The Grand Canal, from Casa Foscari to the Rialto’), crossing out the whole entry and inserting ‘61. S. Giorgio with the Salute. Exh^d drgs 602e. N.G.’,2 in line with his 1930 book In Venice with Turner, where this subject is described as ‘S. Giorgio and Salute, from near S. Biagio’.3 See also the entry for the verso (D14432), which he also radically amended from his 1909 entry. As the published topographical titles make clear, 602f in the early National Gallery display sequence was actually D14453 (Turner Bequest CLXXV 72). In another copy Finberg again crossed out the title and wrote: ‘S. Giorgio on left, with Salute & Dogana on right’.4 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy: ‘now view of the Salute, Dogana &c from the Giudecca’.5 For an attempt to clarify the confusion arising out of the extraction of twelve leaves for display and their subsequent restoration to the sketchbook, see the technical notes in the Introduction.

For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction. At the top left is a separate detail of the lighthouse beside the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, and at the top centre are fishing boats, including one with the painted sails traditional to the area, as shown in Turner’s 1843 painting The Sun of Venice Going to Sea (Tate N00535);6 see under folio 37 recto (D14383) for other studies of boats.