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 ... > Venice and Botzen Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with Santa Maria della Salute at Sunset; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with Santa Maria della Salute at Sunset; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with Santa Maria della Salute at Sunset; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 1840
D31821
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 16
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wh’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St [?Moise]’ top left, upside down, and ‘Tower St Cosma’ top right, upside down
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘16’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 16’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Views of Venice from the Canale de S. Marco’): ‘Salute’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy, amending ‘“Redetta”’ to read ‘Redentore’ and adding: ‘4 panoramas from gondola’.2 This is in reference to the sequence across this page and folio 15 verso opposite (D31820).
With the page turned horizontally, the central view is from the west side of the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, shows the domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute across the Bacino and the sun setting to its left, on the side facing the Canale della Giudecca. To the right of the church are the porch of the Dogana to its east, and the campanili of Santo Stefano and San Moisè, north of the Grand Canal. There is a similar view on the verso (D31822).
Above, separated by a rough pencil line, the other way up and somewhat awkwardly drawn mostly across the gutter on D31820, is another view towards the Salute and Dogana from about the same point, this time labelled to indicate the tower of Santi Cosma e Damiano towards the far end of the Giudecca on the left, and the campanile of San Moisè, north of the Grand Canal, on the right. It is a moot point as to whether the rapidly dashed lines between the domes of the two views, indicating high clouds catching the last of the sun, belong to the upper or lower sketch.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, opposite p.1010.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1010.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Bacino, Venice, from off the Isola di San Giorgio, with Santa Maria della Salute at Sunset; the Salute, with the Campanili of Santi Cosma e Damiano and San Moisè Beyond 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-the-bacino-venice-from-off-the-isola-di-san-giorgio-with-r1196715, accessed 26 April 2024.