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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca' Pesaro and Ca' Vendramin Calergi 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Verso:
The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca’ Pesaro and Ca’ Vendramin Calergi 1819
D14420
Turner Bequest CLXXV 55a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Pacenas]’ and ‘Pasero’ (sic) top right, and ‘Vendramin’ right of centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
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).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, opposite p.514.
2
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
3
Ian Warrell, undated notes in Tate catalogue files.
4
Finberg 1930, pp.50, 165.
5
Ian Warrell, undated notes in Tate catalogue files.
6
Finberg 1930, p.50.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca’ Pesaro and Ca’ Vendramin Calergi 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-grand-canal-venice-with-the-ca-pesaro-and-ca-vendramin-r1186532, accessed 19 September 2024.