Finberg later annotated his 1909
Inventory entry (‘Riva degli Schiavone, from near the Public Gardens’), crossing out ‘Public Gardens’ in favour of ‘San Biagio’,
1 as did the Turner scholar C.F. Bell in his own copy.
2 The view is west from the Canale di San Marco towards the Bacino, along the slow curve of the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront. Compare Tate
D32157 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 20), a similar subject, perhaps from a little further west. The domes of Santa Maria della Salute are shown on the left, silhouetted but almost lost in the glare of the sun setting over the entrance to the Grand Canal. The next feature appears to be a ghostly secondary version of the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), seemingly too prominent to represent one of the other towers beyond it; the domes of the Basilica are outlined towards the centre, to the right of the more clearly defined version.
Across the area of darker clouds at the centre right is a faint network of brown lines, possibly washed out, evoking the profile of a tall building towards the foreground but superseded by the forceful outlines of waterfront structures, suggesting Turner was developing the composition even as he worked, introducing striped awnings and groups of figures in the foreground. Ian Warrell noted that the ‘pen work in this study [see the technical notes below] seems only partly finished; the transition between foreground and distance is too sudden, interrupting the recessions suggested in the washes.’ He gave contemporary watercolour
Venice: The Riva degli Schiavoni (Ashmolean Museum)
3 as a more harmonious ‘example of the way Turner could provide greater detail by using a network of pen lines, while still preserving a unified design’.
4 In this case, Turner’s quest for ‘greater substance, through the addition of coloured outlines, seems to work against the subtle effect he sought to recreate, which perhaps explains why in this instance he took his draughtsmanship no further’.
5Despite these provisional aspects, in 1857 John Ruskin. describing the viewpoint as ‘the Fondamenta Ca’ di Dio’ (just west of the Riva San Biagio and its church), observed:
