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 Grand Canal, Venice, with the Rialto Bridge and Palazzi Including the Bembo and Dolfin Manin 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Rialto Bridge and Palazzi Including the Bembo and Dolfin Manin’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 74 Verso:
The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Rialto Bridge and Palazzi Including the Bembo and Dolfin Manin 1819
D14457
Turner Bequest CLXXV 74a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Partial watermark ‘Al | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘C[...]’, ‘Blue Awng’ and ‘yellow’ towards bottom left, around boats, and ‘Albergo Giorgio Gallo’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the drawing continues on folio 75 recto opposite (D14458). The overall view is north-east along the Grand Canal to the Rialto Bridge, seen on the other page. Here the adjacent campanile of San Bartolomeo rises over the low buildings on the Riva del Ferro, with only the entablature and easternmost windows of the classical Palazzo Dolfin Manin (now the Banca d’Italia) unobscured by masts and sails to their right1 (compare the similar effect on the recto; D14456). The outer half of the page is largely taken up with the Gothic façade of the Palazzo Bembo on the Riva del Carbon, Turner’s viewpoint being just to its west, where the small building on the right of the Calle Bembo above Turner’s note ‘Albergo Giorgio Gallo’ has been replaced or much altered.
This leaf was rebound and stamped after being displayed in the nineteenth century, Finberg’s 1909 Inventory sequence, clear from his descriptive title for the recto and uninformative note ‘Drawing on reverse’ for the verso, was disrupted. What is now the recto (D14456) was, by the implication of an ‘a’ suffix in his Inventory, the verso in his estimation, but it has since been bound as the recto and stamped as ‘74’. The present page was evidently, by its subject and more light-affected condition, the exhibited side. For a discussion of the twelve leaves removed and restored in this way, see the technical notes in the sketchbook’s Introduction.
Finberg subsequently annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘74. The Coal Market. Exhibited drawings, No.602k, N.G.’), bracketing this page as ‘74a’ with ‘75’, and confirming it as ‘the Exh Dg, 602k, called by R[uskin]. “The Coal Market”. V. from Riva del Carbon, with Bembo & Marin Palaces on right’.2 These notes complement his similar expanded entry in his 1930 book In Venice with Turner.3 In another copy of the Inventory he wrote: ‘“Albergo Giorgio Gallo”’.4 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated a further copy: ‘Riva del Carbon. “Albergo Giorgio Gallo”’.5
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
See Finberg 1930, p.46.
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.515; the details are repeated on p.515 itself.
3
Finberg 1930, p.166.
4
Undated MS note by Finberg in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.515.
5
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.515.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Rialto Bridge and Palazzi Including the Bembo and Dolfin Manin 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-grand-canal-venice-with-the-rialto-bridge-and-palazzi-r1186569, accessed 26 April 2024.