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, from under the Rialto Bridge, with the Campanile of Santi Apostoli in the Distance 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, from under the Rialto Bridge, with the Campanile of Santi Apostoli in the Distance’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Recto:
The Grand Canal, Venice, from under the Rialto Bridge, with the Campanile of Santi Apostoli in the Distance 1819
D14472
Turner Bequest CLXXV 82
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 185 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘82’ bottom left, upside down and ‘300’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CLXXV 82’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Owing to confusion over the extraction for display and eventual restoration of numerous leaves (see the technical notes in the sketchbook’s Introduction), Finberg’s 1909 Inventory coupled this page with page ‘81a. The fruit market. Exhibited drawing, No.602i, N.G.’, whereas it is now rightly bound as a brief continuation of a boat from the full-page view of the Grand Canal from under the Rialto Bridge, looking towards the campanile of Santi Apostoli, on folio 81 verso opposite (D14471), which was listed as the subject of page ‘81’ in 1909; the Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated a copy to note pages ‘81a | 82’ as ‘really the entrance to the Rio di Santi Apostoli opposite the Erberia’.1
Although Martin Butlin related the overall view to the very large but unfinished painting The Rialto, Venice of about 1820 (Tate N05543),2 it shows a prospect under the bridge looking in the opposite direction based on the drawing on folios 80 verso–81 recto (D14469–D14470), and is discussed under those pages.
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 C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.515.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.152 no.245, pl.248.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, from under the Rialto Bridge, with the Campanile of Santi Apostoli 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-the-grand-canal-venice-from-under-the-rialto-bridge-with-the-r1186584, accessed 20 April 2024.