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 Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, across the Entrance to the Grand Canal 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, across the Entrance to the Grand Canal’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Recto:
The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, across the Entrance to the Grand Canal 1840
D31912
Turner Bequest CCCXIII 62
Pencil on cream wove paper, 123 x 173 mm
Partial watermark ‘atman’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘62’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIII – 62’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Buildings from canal’): ‘Dogana & Salute from Gd. Canal’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy: ‘The Dogana &c’.2 Among a loose jumble of marks, the salient points are the porch of the Dogana surmounted by its globe and the statue of Fortune, here indicated by a single flick of the pencil, and the dome and cupola of Santa Maria della Salute to the west, perhaps with its campanili indicated by the adjacent vertical strokes. Aspects of the long-familiar prospect, opposite the Hotel Europa (Palazzo Giustinian) where Turner was staying, are shown on nearby pages, including folios 58 recto and 61 recto (D31904, D31910).
There is a rapid variation on folio 63 recto (D31914). As discussed under folio 60 verso (D31909), many of the Venice drawings between there and folio 69 recto (D31926) are in a conspicuously rough mode, sometimes with identifiable landmarks but often seemingly rushed to the point of incoherence, perhaps either on account of stormy weather (see under folio 60 recto; D31908) or failing light.
1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1012.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1012.
Technical notes:
There is a brownish smudge towards the top left and slight staining down the left-hand edge.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, across the Entrance to the Grand Canal 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-dogana-and-santa-maria-della-salute-venice-across-the-r1196807, accessed 27 April 2024.