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 Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice, from the Junction with the Rio di Ca' Foscari, with the Rialto Bridge in the Distance 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice, from the Junction with the Rio di Ca' Foscari, with the Rialto Bridge in the Distance’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Verso:
Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice, from the Junction with the Rio di Ca’ Foscari, with the Rialto Bridge in the Distance 1819
D14452
Turner Bequest CLXXV 71a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘R’ towards top left, over chimney, ‘Casa Tron’ top centre, ‘Foscari’ towards top right, ‘Barbaro’ bottom left, ‘in the Light’ bottom centre, and ‘V Green’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view continues on folio 72 recto opposite (D14453), with a view east-north-east along the Grand Canal in the direction of the Rialto. Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘The Grand Canal; with Palazzo Foscari, Giustiniani, Rezzonico, &c., on the right’), noting Turner’s ‘“Tron”, “Barbaro”’, and revising the title as ‘View from P. Foscari looking towards Rialto: with the Mocenigo, Charmet & Contarini Palaces on right. (This is the right half of drawing which is contd. on p.72)’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy, crossing out the palaces’ names and writing ‘Barbaro, [?Pisa Torri], Foscari’.2
On the present page the corner of the Ca’ Foscari is seen in the foreground on the right,3 at the entrance to the Rio di Ca’ Foscari. East across the apex of the almost right-angled bend of the Grand Canal at this point are the low Palazzo Erizzo Nani Mocenigo on the right with the ‘graceful fourteenth century windows’ Finberg noted,4 the Palazzo Contarini delle Figure (with its tall chimneys) in the middle, its façade partly obscured by sails, and the long, three-part front of the Palazzo Mocenigo receding to the left.
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, 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 Finberg 1930, p.45.
4
Ibid.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice, from the Junction with the Rio di Ca’ Foscari, with the Rialto Bridge 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-palaces-on-the-grand-canal-venice-from-the-junction-with-the-r1186564, accessed 23 April 2024.