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 Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, with San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, with San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 59 Verso:
The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, with San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino 1840
D31907
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 59a
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. Wh’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘View on canal’): ‘From Mouth Gd. Canal. S. Giorgio in distance’.1 Details are a little uncertain in the left foreground, but the viewpoint is likely somewhere off the Palazzo Badoer Tiepolo (now the Westin Europa & Regina Hotel), with a token indication of the porch of the Dogana defining the south side of the Grand Canal on the right. Beyond, the campanile and dome of the church of San Giorgio Maggiore are seen across the Bacino to the east-south-east.
The prospect, from not far west of the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) where Turner was staying, was long familiar; compare a sketch in the 1819 Milan to Venice book (Tate D14434; Turner Bequest CLXXV 62a). Folios 53 recto and 61 recto (D31894, D31910) show similar views.

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.1011.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice, with San Giorgio Maggiore across the Bacino 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-entrance-to-the-grand-canal-venice-with-san-giorgio-r1196802, accessed 20 September 2024.