Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Shipping on the Riva degli Schiavone’): ‘from near the Ponte dell’Arsenale, sunset’.1 This seems about right in terms of the alignment of the distant landmarks, although there is no specific foreground detail to establish the exact viewpoint. The campanile and dome of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore appear on the left to the south-west across the Canale di San Marco, beyond a cluster of sails and masts; in 1857 John Ruskin declared that the ‘composition of these sails and groups of ships leading the eye into the distance is very beautiful’.2 Silhouetted towards the central glare of what seems to be the sinking sun are the domes of Santa Maria della Salute across the Bacino to the west; and the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) is shown to the west-north-west on the right, as pale, not quite vertical and largely blank, with a few touches of yellow. Ian Warrell has also compared the backdrop of an evening scene (D32150; CCCXVI 13), where, as here, ‘topography is subservient to the general vaporous effect’, particularly in the ‘unresolved’ treatment of the campanile.3

The time of day here is uncertain and presumably would have involved further development and harmonisation, as the campanile would be silhouetted towards evening, whereas its brightness and that of the right-hand side generally implies morning light from behind or beside the viewer. At any event, Finberg was unusually effulgent in his description, albeit with reservations: ‘the colour of the water has become an ecstasy of the most heavenly blue; but it is only a moment of rapture set in a ghostly confusion of shipping, palaces, churches and towers.’4 Elsewhere, he described ‘warm, palpitating light’ towards the right: