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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Two-Masted Boat Sailing in the Bacino, Venice, with Moored Shipping and San Giorgio Maggiore Beyond; Studies of Boats including a Gondola 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Two-Masted Boat Sailing in the Bacino, Venice, with Moored Shipping and San Giorgio Maggiore Beyond; Studies of Boats including a Gondola’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
A Two-Masted Boat Sailing in the Bacino, Venice, with Moored Shipping and San Giorgio Maggiore Beyond; Studies of Boats including a Gondola 1840
D32428
Turner Bequest CCCXX 84a
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Folios 82 verso–87 recto (D32424–D32433), all drawn with the pages turned horizontally, form a brief sequence of views around the Bacino. Although Finberg only labelled this view and related studies below it as ‘Shipping’,1 the distant features on the right are readily recognisable as the dome and campanile of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore with its associated monastic buildings on the island of the same name on the south-eastern side of the Bacino.
The viewpoint is off the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking south-south-west so the side of the church and the building with the three rounded gables to its east are seen in elevation, from about the same point as the Riva view in the opposite direction on folio 85 recto opposite (D32429). In the foreground a two-masted vessel is shown sailing eastwards into the Canale di San Marco.
Below is a secondary study of smaller goats including a gondola or gondolas, with San Giorgio’s spire repeated towards the bottom left above the small lighthouse at the eastern end of the island’s harbour.
Compare folio 86 recto (D32431), a similar subject with the church shown in slightly more detail.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1033, and 1930, p.170.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Two-Masted Boat Sailing in the Bacino, Venice, with Moored Shipping and San Giorgio Maggiore Beyond; Studies of Boats including a Gondola 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-two-masted-boat-sailing-in-the-bacino-venice-with-moored-r1196662, accessed 25 April 2024.