Joseph Mallord William Turner

Venice with the Salute

c.1840–5

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On loan

Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich, Germany): Turner at Lenbachhaus Munich

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 622 × 927 mm
frame: 792 × 1085 × 75 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: N05487

Display caption

This is one of a few paintings of Venice which Turner may have begun in the
hope of generating commissions.
It remained unfinished.

It shows the lower end of the Grand
Canal, with the dome of the church
of Santa Maria della Salute shimmering
in the afternoon light. Of the pictures Turner painted in his last years, it was
his images of Venice that were least controversial and most popular
with collectors.

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

502. [N05487] Venice with the Salute c. 1840–5?

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (5487)

Canvas, 24 5/8 × 36 1/2 (62 × 92·5)

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (145, one of 2 each 3'0 1/4" × 2'0 1/2"" with No. 503; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1947.

Exh. R.A. 1974–5 (536); Leningrad and Moscow 1975–6 (68); Paris 1983–4 (68, repr.).

Lit. Davies 1946, pp. 159, 188; Butlin 1981, p. 45.

Turner exhibited no fewer than eighteen small Venetian scenes of this size at the R.A. between 1840 and 1846. Nos. 502 [N05487] and 503 [N05488], both from the Turner Bequest and only revealed by cleaning in the 1970s, are presumably lay-ins for further works for exhibition. No. 502 [N05487] seems to show S. Maria della Salute seen along the Grand Canal from near the present Academia bridge; another view of the Salute, from the opposite direction, was one of the 1844 exhibits (No. 411 [N00539]). The form of the Thomas Brown stamp on the back of the canvases of Nos. 502 [N05487] and 503 [N05488] confirms a dating in the 1840s (see Butlin, loc. cit.).

There are losses, now restored, about 1 in. wide down the left-hand side and about 1/4 in. along parts of the bottom edge.

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

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