Joseph Mallord William Turner

The view is to the east along the Grand Canal. At a glance, the prospect appears similar to that shown in a more developed watercolour in the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32122; Turner Bequest CCCXV 6), but the viewpoint here is from nearer the north side of the canal and perhaps further forward, with the Casa Succi at the entrance to Rio del Santissimo in left foreground (opposite Campo San Vio), and the much larger Palazzo Corner della Ca’ Grande beyond, diminished by the steep perspective.

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Salute and Dogana’): ‘looking E from the Traghetto di San Gregorio’;1 Finberg later suggested: ‘from the Traghetto S. M. Zobenigo’2 (also known as Santa Maria del Giglio). These are opposite each other further on, towards Santa Maria della Salute. Ian Warrell favoured the Traghetto San Maurizio,3 just past the Casa Succi. Receding on the opposite side are the Ca’ Biondetti, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, and Casa Artom; Palazzo Dario and a compressed run of palaces (now terminating in the prominent late nineteenth century Gothic-revival Palazzo Genovese) follows, with the porch of the Dogana in silhouette beyond the gondolas, at the Bacino entrance to the canal.

The domes of the Salute and some west-facing walls catch the light from south, suggesting the early afternoon.4 D32122 shows a similar effect; despite a long, subjective discussion of some supposed points of weakness in Turner’s 1840 Venice watercolours, Finberg detected ‘flashes of the familiar vigour and decision. The dome and tower of the Salute, for instance ..., are struck in with all the old force and fire’ in each case.5 Warrell has observed that in ‘both watercolours the domes and towers of the Salute are defined more by what has been omitted than by a slavish realisation of their actual appearance’6 (see under D32122 for John Ruskin’s comments on Turner’s quest to express the brightness of architecture in the powerful Venetian light); the ‘radiant afternoon sunlight ... catches the flanks of buildings and the domes of the Salute so powerfully that they become disembodied. Watercolour is not used merely to describe form, but also to represent the shadows by which from is defined.’7