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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute from the Bacino, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal, and the Zitelle and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute from the Bacino, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal, and the Zitelle and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Verso:
The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute from the Bacino, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal, and the Zitelle and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca Beyond 1840
D31865
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 38a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘tman’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Corner’ centre right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, there are two sketches here from about the same viewpoint, in the Bacino off the porch of the Dogana, with the domes of Santa Maria della Salute looming above it to the west beside the entrance to the Grand Canal on their right.
In the upper view these features are to the right, and the Giudecca churches of the Zitelle and Redentore are given exaggerated prominence in a highly compressed prospect south and south-westwards across the entrance to the Canale della Giudecca to the left. Just to the right of the Dogana, and deceptively insignificant from this angle, is the monumental Palazzo Ca’ Corner della Ca’ Granda, marked simply ‘Corner’ by Turner, further up on the north side of the Grand Canal.
Below, the Salute and Dogana are on the left, perhaps seen from slightly further south, with the north side of the Grand Canal on the right, with the campanili of Santo Stefano and San Moisè. Turner had first recorded the familiar scene in diligent pencil in his 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14438–D14441; Turner Bequest CLXXV 64a–65, 65a–66). Compare also Turner’s atmospheric 1840 watercolour studies in the Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook, juxtaposing the Dogana and Salute from similar angles, silhouetted against the sunset (D32130, D32133; CCCXV 14, 17)
In his study of Turner’s ‘colour beginnings’, Eric Shanes tentatively linked this page with Tate D25484 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 361),1 a watercolour study which he also mentioned to likelier purpose in connection with an early 1830s view of Caernarvon Castle in Wales, as discussed by the present author in the relevant entry; any generic compositional similarities with the waterfront buildings here appear very slight and doubtless entirely fortuitous.
See also folio 39 recto opposite (D31866), where the churches form a backdrop to moored boats.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Shanes 1997, p.103.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute from the Bacino, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal, and the Zitelle and Redentore on the Isola della Giudecca Beyond 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-the-dogana-and-santa-maria-della-salute-from-the-bacino-with-r1196760, accessed 10 May 2025.