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 Grand Canal, Venice, with the Churches of San Geremia and San Stae 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Churches of San Geremia and San Stae’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Verso:
The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Churches of San Geremia and San Stae 1840
D31857
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 34a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wha’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘St [?Eschio]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘On the Grand Canal – “St Eustachio (?)”’): ‘2 sketches: one of S. Geremia at Entrance Cannaregio, the other ?’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘San Geremia’.2 There are two views, made with the page turned horizontally.
The upper shows the view to the north-west from the Grand Canal to the Baroque church of San Geremia, with slight indications of the entrance to the Canale di Cannaregio to its right. Turner had drawn the scene in detail in his 1819 Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14482–D14483; Turner Bequest CLXXV 87a–88).
The viewpoint for the lower sketch is further east along the Grand Canal, about level with the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi (see folio 35 recto opposite; D31858), looking south-east along the slow curve to the right; on that side is the classical entrance front of the church generally known as San Stae. Turner has labelled it something like ‘St Eschio’, likely an approximation for the saint’s full name, Sant’Eustacchio.3

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.
3
See Jeff Cotton, ‘San Stae’, The Churches of Venice, accessed 21 June 2018, http://www.churchesofvenice.co.uk/santacroce.htm#sanstae.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Grand Canal, Venice, with the Churches of San Geremia and San Stae 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-grand-canal-venice-with-the-churches-of-san-geremia-and-r1196752, accessed 19 April 2024.