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 Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, from the Bacino, with the Redentore and San Giacomo on the Giudecca in the Distance 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, from the Bacino, with the Redentore and San Giacomo on the Giudecca in the Distance’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Verso:
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, from the Bacino, with the Redentore and San Giacomo on the Giudecca in the Distance 1819
D14438
Turner Bequest CLXXV 64a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘lee | 13’
Inscribed in pencil ‘64a’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the drawing continues on folio 65 recto opposite (D14439). The view is west from the Bacino across the start of the Giudecca Canal, with the Dogana towards the right and the entrance to the Grand Canal beyond. In the middle is the church of Santa Maria della Salute, with the Seminario Patriarcale ranged below it. On the other page the scene continues south-west across to the Giudecca and its churches.
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Dogana di Mare and S. Maria della Salute’, bracketed to include this page and D144391), elaborating the subject as ‘64a. Dogana & Salute from near S. Biagio on R. d. Schiavoni’ bracketed with ‘65. (contn.) Redentore & tower of S. Eufemia d’ Giudecca’.2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘from Canal di San Marco’, crossing out the printed curly bracket between this page and CLXXV 65 opposite,3 and similarly annotated Finberg’s In Venice with Turner (1930),4 but there seems no reason to question the continuity of the view.
Finberg noted this view as a ‘good example’ of Turner’s ‘habit of elision’, with the Dogana’s porch shown in some detail from an angle significantly different from that shown on folio 40 recto (D14389), while the form of the Salute, albeit again from a different angle from the careful study on folio 54 verso (D14417), could be largely inferred from that drawing.
Compare the similar but slighter view in the contemporary Venice to Ancona sketchbook (Tate D14516–D14517; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 15a–16). For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
The connection was restated in Finberg 1930, p.41.
2
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.
3
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.514.
4
Undated MS note by Bell (before 1936) in copy of Finberg 1930, Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum, London, p.165, as transcribed by Ian Warrell (undated notes, Tate catalogue files).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, from the Bacino, with the Redentore and San Giacomo on the Giudecca in the Distance 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-santa-maria-della-salute-and-the-dogana-venice-from-the-r1186550, accessed 11 May 2024.