J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Moored Sailing Boats at Venice, with a Distant Dome and Campanile, Perhaps San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino from the Dogana 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Moored Sailing Boats at Venice, with a Distant Dome and Campanile, Perhaps San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino from the Dogana 1840
D41031
Pencil on white wove paper washed with pale green wove paper, 89 x 149 mm, with hinged flap over pocket (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with French days of the week (see main catalogue entry)
This slight study, made with the page turned horizontally, is not mentioned by Finberg.1 The rapid drawing runs across the flap of this endpaper’s integral pocket, and shows a dome and slim tower or spire beyond the masts of moored boats and a building on the right. It may be that this is the familiar view south-east across the Bacino to the church of San Giorgio Maggiore from the entrance to the Grand Canal, framed by the porch of the Dogana. Compare folio 87 recto (D32433), for example.
In the gutter at the top, ascending vertically relative to the drawing, Turner has inscribed his version of the days of the week in French: ‘– Dim | Lundi | Mardi | Mercred | Samdi | Vendred | Samdi’; the latter part of each word extends onto folio 92 verso opposite (D41028), where they are aligned with the day and date table of a printed perpetual calendar.
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Technical notes:
Turner’s drawing overlaps with a flap with a slightly scalloped long edge, 140 x 35 mm, hinged at the fore-edge of the cover, and made from buff card faced with the same white wove paper (washed pale green) used for the endpaper, which itself is laminated over blue wove paper forming a bellows-type pocket with brown cloth hinges. It contains another artist’s visiting card (D41032).
There is a similar pocket inside the front cover (D41025).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Moored Sailing Boats at Venice, with a Distant Dome and Campanile, Perhaps San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino from the Dogana 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-moored-sailing-boats-at-venice-with-a-distant-dome-and-r1196678, accessed 29 March 2024.