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

Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Buildings, &c.’): ‘Grand Canal, with Dogana & Salute’1 and ‘Grand Canal & Salute’.2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy with the latter phrase.3 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Grand Canal near Ca’ Grande, with the Domes of the Salute’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.4

This loosely rendered drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, and shows the view east towards the Grand Canal’s Bacino entrance, with the porch of the Dogana below the domes of Santa Maria della Salute to the right of centre. The prominent building in the left foreground is the Palazzo or Ca’ Corner della Ca’ Granda, with slight indications of its entrance arches and the heavy classical articulation of its upper storeys. There is a view in the same direction from nearer the Bacino on folio 27 verso (D31979).

Turner reprised the present scene from similar positions on folios 38 recto, 75 verso, 76 recto and verso and 88 verso (D31999, D32068–D32070, D32092), while the drawings from here to folio 31 recto (D31977–D31986) may record a continuous short trip between the Grand Canal and the Bridge of Sighs; for this sketchbook’s somewhat convoluted general sequence, see its Introduction. He also returned to this reach in 1840, making colour studies in the Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32122; Turner Bequest CCCXV 6) and separately (D32138; CCCXVI 1); see also The Grand Canal, with the Salute (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford),5 a leaf from the ‘Storm’ sketchbook.6

The incongruous spire at the bottom left is a continuation across the gutter from the detailed view of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore on folio 27 recto opposite (D31978), where there are supplementary details of the upper stages of its campanile. The stark outlines at the bottom right are also carried across from a study of a moored three-masted ship, presumably observed on the Bacino near San Giorgio, which stands east-south-east of the Dogana and is obscured by it in the present drawing. For other studies in this sketchbook showing local shipping in isolation or particularly prominently in topographical views of the city, see under folio 2 verso (D31931).

Technical notes:

There is a splash or stroke of blue-green colour towards the bottom centre, and a stain of what may be brown paint towards the top of the right-hand edge; the latter is offset a little onto folio 27 recto opposite (D31978), with corresponding localised staining on the verso of that leaf (D31979). As discussed under the D31978, these may be signs that the pages were open in the studio in relation to the development of a composition based on the view of San Giorgio there.