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 Church of the Frari, Venice, across the Campo San Rocco from between the Church and Scuola of San Rocco 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Church of the Frari, Venice, across the Campo San Rocco from between the Church and Scuola of San Rocco’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Verso:
The Church of the Frari, Venice, across the Campo San Rocco from between the Church and Scuola of San Rocco 1840
D31861
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 36a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 173 x 123 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Church and Campanile’): ‘Frari’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell similarly marked another copy.2 The view is east from the narrow passageway at the south-east corner of the church of San Rocco, framing the view on the left, and the imposing brick-built Frari church (the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari) across the narrow Campo San Rocco.
Turner’s viewpoint was beside or within the imposing doorway of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and there are perhaps hints of the columns on its façade at the right. Evidence of his exploring Venice away from the Grand Canal and the well-known San Marco (St Mark’s) and waterfront settings are relatively uncommon, and Ian Warrell has suggested that on this occasion he was visiting the Scuola’s renowned cycle of paintings by Tintoretto and other Venetian masters.3 See also folio 37 recto opposite (D31862), where another aspect of the building is shown.

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.
3
See Warrell 2003, pp.63, 161, 262 note 62, 264 note 20.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Church of the Frari, Venice, across the Campo San Rocco from between the Church and Scuola of San Rocco 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-church-of-the-frari-venice-across-the-campo-san-rocco-r1196756, accessed 23 April 2024.