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

This centralised composition leads through the architectural framework of a shadowy Gothic arcade onto a relatively brightly lit scene with distant buildings against a pale sky. The low key of the colour suggests that moonlight is likely intended, although the contrast between the largely bare red-brown paper and the painted areas has been exaggerated owing to irreversible light damage (see the technical notes below). The scene is likely an invention; the bright horizontal strokes towards the bottom centre seem to evoke ripples on a canal,1 as if seen from the open porch of a palazzo, with what may be the silhouette of a gondola beyond. There seems to be a ghostly figure or figures, one possibly lying prone, picked out in chalk in the left foreground.

Numerous contemporary Venetian studies on toned papers use the framing device of an arch or arcade to concentrate attention on real or imagined spaces beyond, whether inside or outside and by day or night, including: Tate D32226, D32227, D32239, D32245, D32247, D32252, D32255, D32257, D36089 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 7, 8, 20, 26, 28, CCCXIX 4, 7, 9, CCCLXIV 243).2 See also the centralised study of the Bridge of Sighs above a starlit canal in the present grouping (D32253; CCCXIX 5).

Ian Warrell has noted the possible confusion between this sheet and other Venice subjects in relation to the early Loan Collections from the Turner Bequest and corresponding entries in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory. He has suggested that the supposed Turner Bequest CCCXVII 3, ‘The Ducal Palace’, listed there as no.98 in the second selection3 but noted as missing since the 1930s, may be a duplication of Tate D32247 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 28) or this work, called ‘Moonlight’ by Finberg and listed by him as no.103 in the First Loan Collection.4 Confusingly, Finberg also gave the same exhibition history to ‘Moonlight; Venice’ (D32222; CCCXVIII 3),5 a scene with a gondola on open water included in the present grouping, and in 1930 listed ‘cccxviii. ... 27’ as ‘Duplicate entr[y], now corrected’.

Technical notes:

The pale blue gouache of the sky has been somewhat rubbed. Whatever the sheet’s exact exhibition history, as discussed above, it has clearly suffered prolonged exposure to light, with the paper darkened considerably at the centre and to a lesser degree in within a concentric band towards the edges, with the paper lighter again at the edges themselves, suggesting two distinct periods of display under mounts with different apertures. As Lindsay Stainton has noted, this has affected the tonal balance of the image.1

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as being on ‘Red-brown paper made at Cartieri Pietro Milani Mill, Fabriano, with a watermark showing the letter “M” accompanied by laurel leaves:2 Tate D32224, D32227, D32230, D32238–D32241, D32245–D32246, D32248, D32251, D32254 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5, 8, 11, 19–22, 26, 27, 29, CCCXIX 3, 6). As Warrell has observed; the support ‘seems to be quite absorbent, so that the colours penetrate through to the back of the sheet’.3

Verso:

Blank, with localised staining where dark washes have bled through from the recto; inscribed by Turner in ink ‘14’ top right, descending vertically; inscribed in pencil ‘60’ centre, upside down; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXVIII.27’ bottom right.