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: San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 61 Recto:
Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana 1819
D14431
Turner Bequest CLXXV 61
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘61’ bottom left, upside down and ‘300’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 61’ top left, upside down
 
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 for this page (‘The Grand Canal, from Casa Foscari to the Rialto’), crossing out the whole entry and inserting ‘61. S. Giorgio with the Salute. Exhd drgs 602e. N.G.’,2 in line with his 1930 book In Venice with Turner, where this subject is described as ‘S. Giorgio and Salute, from near S. Biagio’.3 See also the entry for the verso (D14432), which he also radically amended from his 1909 entry. As the published topographical titles make clear, 602f in the early National Gallery display sequence was actually D14453 (Turner Bequest CLXXV 72). In another copy Finberg again crossed out the title and wrote: ‘S. Giorgio on left, with Salute & Dogana on right’.4 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy: ‘now view of the Salute, Dogana &c from the Giudecca’.5 For an attempt to clarify the confusion arising out of the extraction of twelve leaves for display and their subsequent restoration to the sketchbook, see the technical notes in the Introduction.
For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction. At the top left is a separate detail of the lighthouse beside the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, and at the top centre are fishing boats, including one with the painted sails traditional to the area, as shown in Turner’s 1843 painting The Sun of Venice Going to Sea (Tate N00535);6 see under folio 37 recto (D14383) for other studies of boats.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
See Warrell 2003, pp.83, 263 note 2.
2
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514, with revisions on opposite page.
3
Finberg 1930, p.165.
4
Undated MS note by Finberg in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
5
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
6
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.250–2 no.402, pl.408 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Part of a Panoramic View from the Bacino, Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore, Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana 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-san-giorgio-r1186543, accessed 24 April 2024.