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

Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘On the Grand Canal, with palaces of “Pesaro” and Vendramin Calergi’): ‘Mr. H says “Pasana’s” – the [?swell] brothel of Venice’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy: ‘on l’ after ‘“Pesaro”’ and ‘in distance’ after ‘Vendramin Calergi’.2 Ian Warrell has recorded that the etcher and collector John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929), whose occasional suggestions are noted in copies of the Inventory at Tate Britain, had noted ‘Pasanas’ elsewhere,3 so he was likely Finberg’s discreet ‘Mr. H’.

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view is west along the Grand Canal from in front of the Palazzo (Ca’) Corner della Regina, only one bay of which is shown on the left; as Ian Warrell observed, Finberg’s 1930 note of the viewpoint as the ‘Traghetto di S. Sofia’4 is ‘too far back’5 to the south-east. The main building to its right is the Ca’ Pesaro, another Baroque Palace, which now houses Venice’s International Gallery of Modern Art. In the distance on the other side, below Turner’s inscription, is the Palazzo or Ca’ Vendramin Calergi, the venue for the Casino. As Finberg noted, in this ‘hurried’ (or at least incomplete) drawing, the Pesaro, ‘which is the principal feature of the drawing, has the two lower storeys of its front left blank’.6

For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction; for other figure studies, see under folio 18 verso (D14351).