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, along the Grand Canal from near the Accademia 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, along the Grand Canal from near the Accademia’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 68 Verso:
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, along the Grand Canal from near the Accademia 1819
D14446
Turner Bequest CLXXV 68a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Finberg subsequently (if temporarily) annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Looking along the Grand Canal, with the Salute on the right, and the Palazzo Corner della Ca Grande on the left’): ‘from the Academy’, revising the overall title as ‘V. from nr. Pal. Cavalli, looking twds. The Dogana, with the Ca Grande on left. (da Mulla & Barbarigo on r.) St for Leggatts W. Co’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy, changing Finberg’s ‘along’ to ‘from’.2
The view is eastwards towards the entrance to the canal and the Bacino beyond, with the domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute to the right of the centre and the porch of the Dogana beyond. With its pitched roof, the Palazzo or Ca’ Corner della Ca’ Granda, now the seat of the Prefect of Venice, is the prominent building on the left; the nearest side now incorporates a grid of plain modern windows. To the right of the domes are the Palazzo Barbarigo, with its high gable, with the adjoining Palazzo da Mula Morosini, and to the right of the mooring poles are the Palazzo Loredan Cini, its side wall then blank, the Palazzo Balbi Valier, and a single bay of the Palazzo Contarini Dal Zaffo (Contarini Polignac). This last feature establishes the viewpoint as the south side of the canal, just east of the later Ponte Accademia opposite the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, as Finberg noted.3
Under a misapprehension, Finberg’s MS reference in his Inventory as already transcribed above, ‘St for Leggatts W. Co’, proposed this drawing as a study for a watercolour once in the hands of the London dealers Leggatt Brothers, presumably the work he reproduced in 1930 as The Salute from the Academy Quay.4 He marked the entry for folio 69a (D14448) to the same effect; the watercolour (in fact based on a drawing by James Hakewill) is discussed in the entry for the latter, which is a closer match compositionally.
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
Undated MS note by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, 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
See Finberg 1930, p.42.
4
Finbeg 1930, pl.XII (colour); not in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana, Venice, along the Grand Canal from near the Accademia 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-along-the-r1186558, accessed 24 April 2024.