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 Ponte della Veneta Marina at the Entrance to the Rio della Tana, Venice, from the Canale di San Marco 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Ponte della Veneta Marina at the Entrance to the Rio della Tana, Venice, from the Canale di San Marco’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Recto:
The Ponte della Veneta Marina at the Entrance to the Rio della Tana, Venice, from the Canale di San Marco 1840
D31835
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 23
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘23’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 23’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Canal, with bridge’): ‘on the Cannaregio – the Ghetto’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘on the Canareggio [sic] – the Ghetto & Ponte tre Archi’.2 Turner had drawn the Ponte dei Tre Archi in his 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14479; Turner Bequest CLXXV 86) and did so again in the 1840 Venice; Passau to Würzburg book (D31294; Turner Bequest CCCX 9a).
However, although the fundamental profile of the structure in this horizontal drawing is similar, the setting is much further south, in common with studies on adjacent pages, in the open waters of the Canale di San Marco. The view is north-east to the Ponte Veneta Marina, south of the Arsenale, with what is now Via Giuseppe Garibaldi receding beyond the buildings on the right along the Riva dei Sette Martiri.
The bridge is seen again in a slight study on folio 10 recto (D31809), under which related views are discussed. The stone façade of the structure features the winged lion of St Mark in high relief over the arch, flanked by dolphins at water level, as indicated in the present drawing. The verso (D31836) comprises somewhat disjointed views west along the canal to the Bacino, seen from about level with the bridge.

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, 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 Ponte della Veneta Marina at the Entrance to the Rio della Tana, Venice, from the Canale di San Marco 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-ponte-della-veneta-marina-at-the-entrance-to-the-rio-r1196729, accessed 26 April 2024.