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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the drawing continues across most of folio 70 recto opposite (D14449). Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Looking along the Grand canal towards its entrance, from the front of the Accademia di Belle Arti’), bracketing ‘69a’ and ‘70’ as ‘V. from Traghetto della Carita, lkg. twds Dogana’, and elaborating: ‘69^a. Contn. of P. Cavalli & P. Barbaro, & on right [various other identifications crossed out] Pⁱ Mula & Barbarigo | 70. S. Vitale & part of P. Cavalli. “Piazza della Academia” “Molo des Beaux Arts.”1 In another copy he again recorded the two inscriptions.2 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated a further copy: ‘Campo S. Vidal on the left’.3 Bell similarly marked the entry in Finberg’s 1930 In Venice with Turner.4

The view here is east towards the entrance to the Grand Canal with the domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute at the centre and the porch of the Dogana beyond. The other page continues the subject north-eastwards to the campanile of San Vidal. To the right of the domes are the Palazzo Barbarigo, with its high gable, and the adjoining Palazzo da Mula Morosini. The other buildings are somewhat compressed at this oblique angle, but culminate in the arched windows on the near side of the Palazzo Rota Brandolin (or Brandolini Rota).

This last feature establishes the viewpoint as the south side of the canal, on the Campo della Carità in front of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in the Scuola della Carità, along the ‘quay of the Academy’, as Finberg put it,5 subsequently the site of the Ponte dell’Accademia. Turner hedged his linguistic bets in labelling the spot both ‘Piazza della Accademia’ and ‘Mola des Beaux Arts’. On the other side of the canal are the Palazzo Barbaro and, in the foreground, the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, which is continued opposite.

In addition to the extensive MS notes transcribed above, Finberg marked his interleaved Inventory copy ‘do.’ (ditto), following on from his noting folio 68a (D14446), a view from slightly further east, as ‘St for Leggatts W. C^o’, to the effect that the pages were direct studies for a watercolour once in the hands of the London dealers Leggatt Brothers. This is presumably the work known in recent years as The Grand Canal, with the Salute, Venice (private collection),6 which he titled ‘The Salute from the Academy Quay’, and dated to 1820.7 He criticised the supposed result as inaccurate in numerous specifics,8 but he was in fact under a misapprehension: the watercolour, recorded in 1818, predated Turner’s direct experience of Venice and was an unpublished subject for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy (see Nicola Moorby’s overall Introduction to the tour). Its compositional quirks stem from the perfunctory nature of Hakewill’s original 1817 outline drawing, made with an optical device.9

Whether fortuitously or by design among so many Grand Canal sketches, Turner was here recording for himself a view he had already come to know through Hakewill. The same goes for the prospect west to the Rialto Bridge on folios 48 verso–49 recto (D14406–D14407), reprising another Hakewill subject Turner had already elaborated slightly fancifully in watercolour. For other drawings made in the vicinity and an overview of Turner’s coverage of Venice, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.