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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner
title : Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore – Early Morning
Date: 1819
Part of Como and Venice Sketchbook
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Dimensions: support: 223 x 287 mm
Collection: Tate
Turner visited Venice for the first time in 1819. He stayed only a few days, but the city inspired him to make a group of exceptionally free and limpid views, revealing a new understanding of the qualities of pure watercolour.
These watercolours were made from points at or near the entrance to the Grand Canal and the Canale della Giudecca. Here Sta Maria Maggiore seems to have been observed from the Palazzo Giustiniani, which later became the Hotel Europa, where Turner stayed on subsequent visits to the city.
Although he presumably had no doubt as to the subject, Finberg subsequently annotated his laconic 1909 Inventory title (‘Venice’) with ‘San Giorgio. (J.P.H.)’, the initials of the etcher and collector John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929), whose occasional suggestions are noted in copies of the Inventory at Tate Britain. In another copy he simply noted: ‘S. Giorgio’. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated another copy: ‘San Giorgio from the Dogana, sunrise’. The view is east-south-east across the Bacino to the west front of Palladio’s church of San Giorgio Maggiore, on the island of the same name.
The alignment of the various features of the church and surrounding buildings indicates a viewpoint at the entrance to the Grand Canal opposite the Punta della Dogana, likely outside the Palazzo (or Ca’) Giustinian (later the Hotel Europa); beyond to the left is the waterfront on the north side of the Canale di San Marco towards the Giardini Pubblici.
Text my Matthew Imms (2017) from Catalogue Entry
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