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

The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Giudecca (?)’): ‘Lighthouses of S. Giorgio in foreground’.1 He also marked a copy of Finberg’s 1930 book In Venice with Turner to the same effect.2 The page’s title was amended by Ian Warrell to ‘The Harbour of San Giorgio Maggiore, Looking East; and the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore from the North’ in 2003, in connection with his concurrent Turner and Venice exhibition at Tate Britain.3 The related drawings were made with the page turned horizontally.

There are two variant views here, one above the other, with the stone lighthouse at the west end of the narrow harbour on the north side of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore as the most detailed feature of the upper. Turner was evidently on the Bacino just to its west, with the campanile and dome of the neighbouring church lightly indicated above monastery buildings to the right; compare the more detailed view in the 1840 Venice and Botzen sketchbook (Tate D31832; Turner Bequest CCCXIII 21a).

The artist already knew the church and island well (see for example folio 2 recto; D31930), and on this occasion his attention was more engaged by the Riva degli Schiavoni waterfront to his left, across the beginning of the Canale di San Marco to the north-east. At the far left of the typically laterally compressed and selective view, the distant spire of San Francesco della Vigna and the nearer onion dome of San Giorgio dei Greci’s campanile are seen to the left of the pedimented façade of the Riva’s Pietà church, with what is likely the simplified profile of San Martino’s tower to the right.

The looser variant below is from further back, with the pedimented west front of San Giorgio now in view on the right. Warrell has noted the diagonal spars of bragozzo boats passing the church.4 There are other Bacino views on the recto and folio 48 recto opposite (D32017, D32019), the latter from the quay in front of San Giorgio. The most detailed view of the lighthouse, from a similar position, is on folio 74 recto (D32065). For this sketchbook’s somewhat convoluted general sequence, including Hardy George’s broad overview,5 see its Introduction.

Technical notes:

The outer corners were formerly folded diagonally, with some staining to the folded portions; this seems to have been to enable ready access to the drawing on the recto (D32017), the source of a later painting.