Joseph Mallord William Turner

Venetian Festival

c.1845

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On loan

Two Temple Place (London, UK): John Ruskin: Seeing Beauty, Inspiring Minds

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 724 x 1133 mm
frame: 1000 x 1410 x 75 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: N04659

Display caption

This is one of a pair of paintings of Venetian festivals which were probably produced in the mid-1840s. This painting is probably not finished and was not exhibited. The shallow landscape format is typical of Turner’s late Venetian subjects.

Gallery label, February 2010

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Catalogue entry

508. [N04659] Venetian Festival c. 1845

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (4659)

Canvas, 28 1/2 × 44 5/8 (72·5 × 113·5)

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (? 138 or 139, 2 each 3'9" × 2'4 1/2"), transferred to the Tate Gallery 1938.

Exh. Australian tour 1960 (16); Tokyo and Kyoto 1970–71 (46, repr.); Dresden (21) and Berlin (31, colour pl. 22) 1972; Lisbon 1973 (21, repr. in colour).

Lit. Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 64; Butlin 1981, p. 45.

Companion to No. 507 [N04661], q.v. Formerly called ‘Venice, after the Ball’.

The canvas bears the stamp of T. Brown of the type that seems to have come in in 1839.

Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984