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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Milan to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Campanili of San Stefano, San Moisè and San Marco (St Mark's) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Campanili of San Stefano, San Moisè and San Marco (St Mark's) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace)’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 60 Verso:
Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Campanili of San Stefano, San Moisè and San Marco (St Mark’s) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) 1819
D14430
Turner Bequest CLXXV 60a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘VW VW’ centre right, below buildings
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Folios 59 recto and verso, 60 verso and 61 recto (D14427–D14428, D14430–D14431) form a continuous panoramic west view across the Bacino, from the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore to the south to the Riva San Biagio to the north; Turner would have had to temporarily turn back D14430 and D14428 to match their outer edges to the points were the overall view continued.1
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry for this page (‘The Doge’s Palace and Mint’): ‘St Moses. Zecca. Campl.’2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘Panorama from middle of Bacino Prison to r Pal. Corner to l’.3 At the gutter is the Palazzo (or Ca’) Corner della Ca’ Grande (or Granda), on the Grand Canal. Aligned towards the centre are the campanili of San Stefano and the nearer San Moisè. Towards the right the campanile of St Mark’s rises west of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and New Prison.
When this leaf was rebound and stamped after being displayed in the nineteenth century, Finberg’s 1909 Inventory sequence, clear from his descriptive titles for the recto and verso, was disrupted. What is now the recto (D14429) was, by the implication of an ‘a’ suffix in his Inventory, the verso in his estimation, but it has since been bound as the recto and stamped as ‘60’. The present page was evidently, by its subject matter and more light-affected condition, the exhibited side.
For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
1
See Warrell 2003, pp.83, 263 note 2.
2
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
3
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
Technical notes:
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry: ‘? Rep[?d] ([...]) | yes | 13/8/29’,1 apparently concerning conservation work after the 1829 Tate Gallery flood.

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, p.514.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Campanili of San Stefano, San Moisè and San Marco (St Mark’s) and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) 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-part-of-a-panoramic-view-from-the-bacino-venice-the-entrance-r1186542, accessed 16 April 2024.