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 The South-West Bend of the Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca' Rezzonico, Palazzi Balbi, Morolin, Grassi and Malipiero, and Church of San Samuele 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The South-West Bend of the Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca' Rezzonico, Palazzi Balbi, Morolin, Grassi and Malipiero, and Church of San Samuele’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Recto:
The South-West Bend of the Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca’ Rezzonico, Palazzi Balbi, Morolin, Grassi and Malipiero, and Church of San Samuele 1819
D14451
Turner Bequest CLXXV 71
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Yelow [sic] | [?Shadw]’ towards top centre, beside buildings, ‘w’ towards bottom right, on balcony, ‘Pallazzo’ and ‘Manino’ twice towards bottom right, and ‘Chesa [?Far] | Frari’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘70’ bottom left, upside down and ‘300’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 71’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbooks foliation, the main drawing continues across folio 70 verso opposite (D14450), where Turner looks north to the Palazzo Balbi and ranges north-eastwards past the church of San Samuele on the opposite side. Finberg subsequently annotated his detailed 1909 Inventory entry (‘Looking up the Grand Canal from near the Accademia di Belle Arti; showing the Palazzo Balbi and the Tower of the Frari on the left, with the Palazzo Garzoni (the French Consulate), Palazzo Grassi, &c., and the Campanile of S. Stefano on the right’), bracketing ‘70a’ and ‘71’ as ‘From steps of the Calle dei Cerchieri’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy, crossing out ‘Balbi’ and writing ‘Rezzonico’.2
As Finberg established, the viewpoint is the waterfront end of the Calle dei Cerchieri, with the Palazzo Moro lightly indicated in the immediate foreground, and smaller buildings on the Fondamenta del Traghetto before the bulky classical façade of the Ca’ Rezzonico, now a museum of eighteenth-century Venice; almost hidden at the gutter before the canal turns right and the view continues on the other page is the campanile of the Frari (the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari).3 For various commentators’ remarks on this elaborate and assured double-page drawing, see under D14450.
For other studies of boats in this sketchbook, see under folio 37 recto (D14383), and for 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, opposite 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 also Finberg 1930, p.42.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The South-West Bend of the Grand Canal, Venice, with the Ca’ Rezzonico, Palazzi Balbi, Morolin, Grassi and Malipiero, and Church of San Samuele 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-the-south-west-bend-of-the-grand-canal-venice-with-the-ca-r1186563, accessed 16 April 2024.