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: St Mark's Square, the Piazzetta ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Basilica and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, at or towards Night, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) and Piazzetta Beyond 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Basilica and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's), Venice, at or towards Night, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) and Piazzetta Beyond’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Basilica and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, at or towards Night, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and Piazzetta Beyond 1840
D32256
Turner Bequest CCCXIX 8
Gouache and watercolour on grey-brown wove paper, 149 x 228 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXIX 8’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is south-south-east down the Piazzetta from the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), with the Basilica and Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) to the left and the lower stages of the campanile in front of the Libreria Sansoviniana towards the right. A few figures are indicated by rapid strokes in the foreground. It is unclear whether the irregular brown strokes at that edge are incidental, accidental, or an active element of the composition; if the latter, there may have been an idea of framing this simplified, pictorial prospect from within the arcade of the Procuratie Vecchie, as Turner did in two views from the arches of the former Palazzo Reale (or Ala Napoleonica) at the west end of the square (Tate D32245, D32255; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 26, CCCXIX 7).
Compare two variants (D32250, D32258; CCCXIX 2, 10), and a night scene ‘of festivity’1 from the far end of the Piazzetta (D32220; CCCXVIII 1). Lindsay Stainton has called them ‘reminiscent of the compositions of the famous Venetian view painters, notably Canaletto and Guardi’.2 Ian Warrell has described the three Piazza views, with their ‘progressively more intense blues’ (those in the present work being the lightest), as seeming ‘to chart the shift from evening into night, making manifest how the Piazza vibrated with the animation of fickle crowds, oscillating between brightly illuminated puppet shows and the surrounding cafés’.3
Four contemporary pencil studies with white highlights on a folded sheet of buff-grey paper also show similar views (Tate D32192–D32195; Turner Bequest CCCCVIII 13a–d).
1
Finberg 1930, p.93.
2
Lindsay Stainton, Turner’s Venice, London 1985, p.45; see also Warrell 2003, p.125, and fig.24 (a comparable Canaletto etching).
3
Warrell 2003, p.125.
Technical notes:
Ian Warrell has observed that this sheet was ‘formerly attached on right edge to right edge’ of Tate D32257 (Turner Bequest CCCXIX 9). They are among numerous 1840 Venice works he has noted as being on ‘Grey-brown paper produced by an unknown maker (possibly ... a batch made at Fabriano [Italy])’;1 for numerous red-brown Fabriano sheets used for similar subjects, see for example under Tate D32224 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5).
Warrell noted the grey-brown sheets as being torn into two formats: nine sheets of approximately 148 x 232 mm (Tate D32220, D32249–D32250, D32252–D32253, D32255–D32258; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 1, CCCXIX 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–10), and seven of twice the size, at about 231 x 295 mm (Tate D32223, D32226, D32228–D32229, D32231, D32233, D32242 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 23).
1
‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, section 11) in Warrell 2003, p.259; see also sections 9 and 10; see also Powell 1995, p.161, and Bower 1999, p.112.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXIX [...]’ and ‘D32256’ bottom right; Finberg recorded Turner’s inscription in ink ‘8’,1 although this not readily evident and presumably obscured by the present mount. For Turner’s various annotations to 1840 Venice sheets, see the overall Introduction to the tour.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1029.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Basilica and Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s), Venice, at or towards Night, with the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) and Piazzetta Beyond 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-basilica-and-campanile-of-san-marco-st-marks-venice-at-r1197050, accessed 27 April 2024.