Venice was the playground of Europe in 1700. The City was famous for many things: Carnivals, legal gambling, masked balls, a dozen opera houses and theaters, relaxed moral code, unique canal streets filled with marble palaces, and a wide white-sand beach. Europeans on the Grand Tour flocked to Venice. Master artists such as Canaletto (1691-1786) provided these wealthy tourists with souvenir (vedute) paintings of the beauty they experienced during their time in Venice.
Canaletto’s painting Entrance to the Grand Canal from the Molo Venice (1742-44) (oil) (45”x61”) (NGA) captures a sun-filled scene of wide docks and walkways, gondolas and sailing ships, and sparkling marble palaces and churches. Who could resist stopping at such a place?
Venice lost its appeal for a time. Its trade routes were challenged, and on May 2, 1797, the Republic was dissolved without a fight when it faced Napoleon’s advance. He took France and then Austria, which controlled Venice, in August 1849. Venice suffered. Battle damage and cholera added to the decay caused by the city’s naturally wet environment. The Austrians dredged canals, tore down decaying buildings, and built the railroad that connected Venice to the mainland. The Venetians expelled the Austrians in 1866 and joined the new Italian Kingdom.
The British artist Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775-1851) made three trips to Venice during the summers of 1819, 1833, and 1840. He was influenced by Canaletto’s many engravings of Venice that were published from 1735 until 1742. Turner stayed on his first visit in the Albergo Leon Bianco (White Lion), close to the Rialto Bridge. He remained in Venice for less than a week, but in that short time, he created four large sketchbooks in pencil and watercolor. He commented that “he could make fifteen pencil sketches in the time taken to produce one watercolor.”
Turner specialized in landscape painting in oil. He painted dramatic views of nature that provided settings for mythological figures. In Venice, Turner found scenes that brought out another side of his art. The watercolor, San Giorgio Maggiore, Early Morning (1819) captures the hazy glow created by the early morning sun. All is calm. The boats at the docks float on calm water. This panorama includes the entrance into the Grand Canal at a distance, the Campanile (323-foot bell tower), and the Ascension dome of Saint Mark’s Basilica, the tallest of the five domes. Their silhouettes are reflected in the shimmering water.
Turner visited Venice for the second time in 1833. He used pencil and watercolor to create The Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Customs House (1833) (20”x32”) (Tate). It was his tribute to Canaletto who is depicted at the lower left standing on the dock with his easel and painting. The Customs House with the tower and weathervane figure of Fortune is at the end of the dock. Across the Grand Canal is the Campanile and the entrance to St Mark’s Square with the Ducal palace and the Bridge of Sighs at the right.
On his second trip to Venice, which lasted for only two weeks, Turner came prepared with Whatman brand sketchbooks, his favorites. He stayed in the Hotel Europa. The building’s balconies and steps allowed him to look directly down the Grand Canal. On returning to England, he was able to translate his drawings into oil paintings that are demonstrations of his ability to create on canvas the sunlight and atmosphere he experienced in person in Venice.
The painting Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834-35) (36”x48”) (oil) (NGA) leads the viewer’s eye past the busy docks on the right to the weather vane atop the Customs House. Across the canal is the campanile and dome of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiori. The Church, designed by the famous Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, was under construction from 1566 until 1610. Palladio is known for his revival of the classical temple façade that included white Istrian marble columns with Corinthian capitals. Turner would paint many watercolors of this scene at different times of the day. He was thirty years ahead of the Impressionists.
Turner was best known in England as a painter of nautical scenes: ships at sea, fishermen, storms, ship wrecks, and the occasional dramatic landscape including mythological characters. He was the youngest artist ever to have been admitted (1802) to the Royal Academy of Art. His ability to capture nature was evident in several oil images, in plein air, titled The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1834). He had not shown his Venetian oils or watercolors until 1833 at the Royal Academy of Art’s annual exhibition. There was controversy. Some critics considered his work to be only splotches of paint. But it represented a new vision, one that Turner intended.
In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Byron wrote about Venice in its glory and then its decline: “And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, and music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone–but Beauty still is here.” Turner also wrote poetry, and he often included a few lines when he showed his paintings.
Turner’s final trip to Venice was his most productive, innovative, and introspective. He continued to paint images of Venice as he had done earlier, but he began to depict the fading beauty of Venice. The Sun of Venice Going to Sea (1843) is focused on a Venetian bragozzo, a flat-bottomed wooden fishing boat. The name Sol de Venezia (Sun of Venice) is written on its sails. The boat is old and rusting. Turner paired the painting with a verse from his unfinished poem “The Fallacies of Hope” in which he wrote about despair and tragic consequences caused by human folly. The Sun of Venice sets out to sea with the shadow of a decaying Venice in the background. This image was intended as a warning to England.
“The moon is up, and yet it is not night/The sun as yet disputes the day with her” from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was the text Turner paired with Approach to Venice (1844) (25”x37”) (NGA). A flotilla of gondolas and barges crosses the lagoon toward the city.
Turner was a recluse, and his contemporaries found him to be an enigma. Ten sketchbooks with hundreds of Venetian sketches were found in his studio after he died. There also were several watercolors.
Turner is celebrated as the Painter of Light, pre-dating the Impressionists. The Patrons of New Art at the Tate Museum in London established in 1984 the annual Turner Prize. It is the most prestigious award for outstanding exhibition and presentation in Britain.
“At Venice, Turner found freedom of space, brilliancy of light, variety of color, massive simplicity of general form; and to Venice we owe many of the motives in which his highest powers of color have been displayed”. (John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1843)
Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.
