Wednesday 25 June 2014

Week 10: Ruskin and Venice

Ruskin and the “Paradise of all Cities.”

“The Author of Modern Painters”, 1843, engraving after lost watercolour

J.M.W. Turner, Approach to Venice, ex RA, 1844, NGA, Washington, oil on canvas, 62 x 94 cm. LINK

John Ruskin, The Palazzo-Contarini-Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1841, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, pencil on paper. LINK

 Samuel Prout, The Palazzo-Contarini-Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice, after 1841, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, watercolour and body colour, 43.4 x 30.2 cm.

On his first journey to Venice with his parents John James and Margaret Ruskin in 1835, the young John Ruskin took the opportunity to make pencil drawings of architecture and jot down his thoughts on being in the city in the sea. Later, his older self, looking back with both feelings of nostalgia and melancholy, notes that in a diary of entry of 6th May, his younger self proclaimed exultantly: “Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of all cities.” In his autobiography, Praeterita, Ruskin excitedly records his anticipation of Venice as his family make their way from Padua towards the city in 1835. His first actual sight of Venice leads to rapturous observations (“the black knot of gondolas in the canal of the Mestre, more beautiful to me than a sunrise of clouds all scarlet and gold”) as well as the reflection that his Venice “like Turner’s” has been mainly created for critic and artist by Byron.[1] With some reservations, Byron was also admired by John James who was actually an amateur artist who owned a watercolour by Turner and who encouraged his son’s interest in art.” [2] As Robert Hewison points out, Ruskin “imagined Venice long before he saw the city.”[3] His first visit was an imaginary one: a visit in 1833, at the age of fourteen, when the Ruskin family travelled to Italian destinations including Turin, Genoa and Milan; but the family’s plans of going on to Venice were thwarted by a hot summer, so they retreated to Switzerland. Ruskin’s vivid imagination compensated by creating some juvenile stanzas on the Jewel of the Adriatic; and the fund of images were derived from a variety of sources: chiefly, Byron, Shelley and Samuel Rogers. Ruskin’s initial interest in Venice had been sparked by reading Rogers’s Italy, which included engravings of Venice by the artists J.M. W. Turner and Thomas Stothard. Ruskin also admired the watercolourist Samuel Prout whose style influenced the young artist’s first drawings of Venice.

The Stones of Years: The Architectural Record.

Angle of the Portico, Ducal Palace, Venice with carving of Judgement of Solomon

John Ruskin, The South Side of the Basilica of St Mark’s, Venice, from the Loggia of the Doge’s Palace, c. 1851, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, pencil and watercolour, heightened with white, on three joined pieces of paper, 95.9 x 45.4 cm

John Ruskin, Study of Archivolt in St Mark’s, Venice, 1850-51, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, pencil and wash, with some watercolour, 38.2 x 54.7 cm

John Ruskin, Plate XIV, The Orders of Venetian Arches, in The Stones of Venice, vol. 2, 1853, engraving.
A decade later, in 1845, Ruskin was allowed to travel to Venice without his parents, to start preliminary research for his magnum opus, The Stones of Venice all of which was funded by John James. A mammoth undertaking, the publication of the first volume of SV would have to wait until 1851, the other two volumes, in 1853, the whole sequence complete by 1860. As Hewison says, SV contains two discourses: “the language of technical description”; and the “richer rhetoric of religious evocation.”[4] Ruskin’s method is innovative: the books were the result of microscopic research and physical labour examining the buildings and monuments of Venice on the spot. Ruskin went back to basics, quarrying the material of raw data, and eventually processing his findings through rigorous analysis. He made extensive drawings of architectural features such as capitols, griffons, lintels, which bring the reader back to first principles.  Another aspect of the SV project was that it helped to shape Ruskin’s views on work and society: there was pleasure in the stonemason’s work, who though low in the social order, was like an artist: dignified and secure in his own belief in his craft. As Ruskin’s biographer, John Batchelor notes this was “a romantic view of work opposed to the mid- Victorian protestant ethic.” The Great Man or artist can “undo the social structure supporting the gentleman and invoke instead the genius.”[5] Ruskin's working methods that led to the SV suggest a lack of ambition, but not drive. Given high intellect, an original cast of mind, and a far-seeking curiosity, this is the mark of the genius. If Ruskin had lived during the renaissance, he would have resembled somebody like Leonardo da Vinci, and his project drawings and notes suggest the same kind of obsession. Unfortunately, this pleasure in incessant work left little time for his young, beautiful bride Euphemia (Effie) Gray whom Ruskin had married on 10th April, 1848. Ruskin was far too preoccupied with the architectural story of Venice to be distracted by his marriage. Famously, the marriage was never consummated and Effie Gray would eventually leave Ruskin for the painter Millais who, ironically, was painting Ruskin's portrait as he fell in love with his wife. Ruskin would embark on another disastrous relationship by transferring his attentions to a young girl, Rose La Touche, a ten year old daughter of an Irish banker. There was innocence about this because Rose represented an emblem of purity, something unattainable like the object of a medieval quest. Fully immersed in Tennyson Morte d’Arthur, Dante’s Vita Nuova and identifying with the chivalric St George of Carpaccio’s cycle, Ruskin wove the strands of autobiography, myth, legend and art together into a complicated tapestry completely impenetrable to anyone but its author.
 
Ruskin and the Venetian School of Painting. 

“John” Bellini, Frari Triptych, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice,  1488, oil on panel.

Titian, The Entombment, 1523-26, Museé du Louvre, oil on canvas, 148 x 205 cm.

Tintoretto, The Crucifixion, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, 1565, oil on canvas.

John Ruskin, Copy after the Central Portion of Tintoretto’s “The Crucifixion” in the Scuola Grande di san Rocco, Venice, 1845, Ruskin Library, University of Lancaster, pencil, chalk, ink and watercolour on paper, 27 x 53.5 cm.
A system of religious values – see below- informs many of Ruskin’s reflections on Venetian painting in his SV. According to Ruskin, Titian’s religion was like that of Shakespeare: “occult behind his magnificent equity” (MP, V) But what Ruskin found most objectionable in Titian (and Giorgione) was that they made the body the principle subject of painting: “Sensual passion in man was, not only a fact, but a Divine fact” (MP, V), views which betray Ruskin’s discomfort with the human body just as much as puritan attitudes towards Catholic art.[6] By contrast, Ruskin claimed that Tintoretto’s mind was “deeper” and more “serious” than Titian’s, his tone therefore more suited to devotion.[7] Ruskin “discovered” Tintoretto in 1845 on a visit to the Scuola di San Rocco, and in the third volume of his SV, he declared that the traveller should "give unembarrassed attention and unbroken time" to the marvels of Tintorettos within. Ruskin described nearly every work by Tintoretto in the city, and he would eventually come to rate Tintoretto above all other renaissance painters. In a letter to his father in 1845, Ruskin praised Tintoretto in glowing terms: “I never was so utterly crushed to the earth before any human intellect as I was today- before Tintoret. Just be so good as to take my list of painters and put him in the school of Art at the top-top-top-of everything, with a big black line underneath.” Tintoretto was the first painter that Ruskin identified with his own experiences and own aesthetic beliefs. In addition to writing extensively on Tintoretto in the second volume of Modern Painters, Ruskin made copies of some of his works like the Circumcision, now, sadly, thought to be a product of the painter’s studio. Many of Ruskin’s interpretations are of details,- fragments of large works, perhaps indicating the critic’s interest in iconography and the use of symbols. Holman-Hunt told Millais, obviously estranged from Ruskin, how the critic “describes pictures of the Venetian school in such a manner that you see them with your inner sight, and you feel that the men who did them had been appointed by God, like old prophets, to bear a sacred message.”[8] On a visit to Venice in 1866 Ruskin read to Hunt passages from MP in front of Tintoretto’s paintings,- but these extracts concerned aesthetic and formal ideas rather than religious symbolism, which chimes in with Ruskin’s modified views on religion.[9]

Changing Values: Ruskin, Piety and Venetian Colour.

Charles Fairfax Murray, John Ruskin, 1875, Tate Britain, London, watercolour and gouache on paper, 476 x 311 mm. LINK

Vincenzo Catena, (prev. att to Titian), Portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti, 1523-31, ( prev owned by John Ruskin), National Gallery, London, , oil on canvas, 97.2 x 79.4 cm. LINK

John Ruskin (after Paolo Veronese), Negro Page and Parrots from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1858, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, watercolour, gouache, and graphite on cream wove paper, 57 x 44.5 cm. LINK

Vittorio Carpaccio, The Dream of St Ursula, 1495, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, tempera on canvas, 274 x 267 cm.
In what Ruskin called “the mare maggiore”, or wide sea of Venetian painting, the critic had his own favourite islands and landmarks, though his preferences changed over time. Initially, in SV, the artists Giorgione, Titian and Veronese are subject to harsh criticism, mainly for their colour which is seen as sensual. Not only do these artists fail to satisfy Ruskin’s standards for painting, but are deemed to be lacking in piety, a more serious failing in this critic’s eyes. Stylistic “decay” was a symptom of what Ruskin saw as deterioration in Christian values: "The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of Veronese, and of every succeeding religious painter, that the fifteenth-century had taken away the religious heart of Venice." In the third volume of MP, Ruskin created a hierarchy of painters based on both spiritual and aesthetic values: at the top was Fra Angelico because he loved all “spiritual beauty”; next was Paolo Veronese and Correggio, “intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty” of the second rank; and lastly, Dürer, Rubens, generally Northern artists, “insensible to beauty and caring only for truth.”[10] However, it seems that a crisis point might have been reached during a six week visit to Turin in 1858 which may have caused Ruskin to question his own beliefs about art and faith, even occasioning an un-conversion, what Ruskin called his “Queen of Sheba Crash.” At Turin, Ruskin made copies of parts of Veronese’s large work, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and while there are many factors motivating Ruskin’s interest in this large canvas, according to Hewison, it was chiefly the difference between “the beauty of its imagery and the ugliness of the Protestantism that he encountered in Turin” that affected Ruskin.[11] This would have consequences: by 1860, even Fra Angelico and the Florentines would lose their status as Ruskin carefully re-evaluated Venetian colour claiming moral and spiritual values in colorito, detectible in the hues in the landscape, God’s creation.[12] Carpaccio was another late interest- but the painter nearly tipped the critic over the edge. In the late 1870s Ruskin came close to a pyschological breakdown as he began to see symbols in Carpaccio's paintings like plants and parrots that convinced him the dead Rose La Touche was trying to communicate with him! 

Venetian Coda.

 Vittore Carpaccio, St George and the Dragon, 1502, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice, tempera on canvas, 141 x 360 cm.


John Ruskin, Portrait of Rose La Touche? 1861, Ruskin Library, Lancaster, pencil, watercolour and bodycolour

Frederick Hollyer, Photograph of Ruskin, 1894 
By the time the fifth volume of MP was published in 1860, Venetian colour had been reappraised; Ruskin’s design for art history had been completely overhauled with Titian and Giorgione favourably situated; and colour was accommodated within the context of natural theology, partly solving Ruskin’s anxiety about reconciling his protestant views with aesthetic appreciation. Now, in his list of top seven colourists, four are Venetian: “There have been only seven supreme colourists among the true painters whose works exist (namely, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Correggio, Reynolds and Turner.”[13] The placing of Giorgione and Turner at opposite ends of a critical spectrum is significant: Giorgione, and by implication Venice, is now thought of as an artist in Paradise unlike Turner in London who now has to paint a city rank with sin; Giorgione painted the deathless calm dignity of man; but like a social critic, Turner was forced to record the materialism of his age, and the unsightliness that it brought. Out of the dark despair at what he called the “the impure gloom of modern Italy”, in Ruskin’s mind symbolised by the shriek of steamboat whistles that drowned out the gondolier’s cry, would emerge Ruskin the social theorist, educational reformer and public intellectual with a conscience. [14] And it would be another symbol, this time from Venetian painting, that would serve Ruskin in the 1870s: Carpaccio’s St George would not only become a symbol of his own conflicted thoughts on the dead Rose La Touche who had to be rescued from the underworld like Proserpina; but also an emblem of the crusade against the dragon of materialism whose putrefying and skeletal victims are strewn around the monster, perhaps symbolic of the Paradise lost to modernity,- Venice herself?

Slides.

1)      “The Author of Modern Painters”, 1843, engraving after lost watercolour,
2)      J.M.W. Turner, Richmond Hill and Bridge, c. 1828, British Museum, watercolour and bodycolour heightened with white on paper, 291 x 435 mm.
3)      John Ruskin (after Copley Fielding), Loch Achray, 1834-1835, watercolour
4)      J.M.W. Turner, Approach to Venice, ex RA, 1844, NGA, Washington, oil on canvas, 62 x 94 cm. 
5)      John Ruskin, The Palazzo-Contarini-Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1841,
6)      Samuel Prout, The Palazzo-Contarini-Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice, after 1841, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, watercolour and body colour, 43.4 x 30.2 cm.
7)      J.M.W. Turner, Juliet and her Nurse, Private Collection, Argentina, 1836, oil on canvas, 92 x 23 cm.
8)      Aerial View of Venice
9)      View of St Mark’s Basilica.
10)  John Ruskin, The South Side of the Basilica of St Mark’s, Venice, from the Loggia of the Doge’s Palace, c. 1851, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, pencil and watercolour, heightened with white, on three joined pieces of paper, 95.9 x 45.4 cm.[15]
11)  John Ruskin, Study of Archivolt in St Mark’s, Venice, 1850-51, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, pencil and wash, with some watercolour, 38.2 x 54.7 cm.[16]
12)  John Ruskin, Plate XIV, The Orders of Venetian Arches, in The Stones of Venice, vol. 2, 1853, engraving.
13)  View of the Ducal Palace.
14)   “John” Bellini, Frari Triptych, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice,  1488, oil on panel. “..Its chief pictorial treasure is the John Bellini in the sacristy, the most finished and delicate example of the master in Venice.”
15)  Titian, The Entombment, 1523-26, Museé du Louvre, oil on canvas, 148 x 205 cm.
16)  Façade of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 1516-49, marble.” [17]
17)  Tintoretto, The Crucifixion, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, 1565, oil on canvas.[18]
18)  John Ruskin, Copy after the Central Portion of Tintoretto’s “The Crucifixion” in the Scuola Grande di san Rocco, Venice, 1845, Ruskin Library, University of Lancaster, pencil, chalk, ink and watercolour on paper, 27 x 53.5 cm.[19]
19)  Tintoretto, The Circumcision, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice,1583-87, oil on canvas.
20)  John Ruskin, Drawing of Tintoretto’s “Circumcision” in Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, 1869, Ashmoleon, Oxford, pencil, watercolour, and body colour on paper, 34.8 x 39.2 cm.[20]
21)  John Ruskin, Study of the Child in Tintoretto’s “Circumcision” in Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, 1869, watercolour and body colour over pencil on paper, 34.1 x 50.6 cm.[21]
22)  Edward Burne-Jones, Copy after Tintoretto’s The Circumcision, probably 1862, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, watercolour and bodycolour on paper, 18.1 x 24 cm.
23)  Previously att to Paolo Veronese, now thought to be by Benedetto Caliari, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, c. 1582, Galleria Sabauda, Turin, oil on canvas,
24)  Detail: Queen of Sheba and her Handmaids
25)  John Ruskin (after Paolo Veronese), Negro Page from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, 1858, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, watercolour, gouache, and graphite on cream wove paper, 57 x 44.5 cm.
26)  John Ruskin, View from the Palazzo Bembo to the Palazzo Grimani, Venice, 1870, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, pencil and watercolour on paper, 35.3 x 50.8 cm.[22]
27)  Vittorio Carpaccio, The Dream of St Ursula, 1495, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, tempera on canvas, 274 x 267 cm
28)  John Ruskin, Drawing of Carpaccio’s “Dream of St Ursula”,  from “The Legend of St Ursula” , 1876, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on paper, 29.4 x 27.6 cm.[23]
29)  John Ruskin, Head of St Ursula, from Carpaccio’s “Dream of St Ursula” , 1877, Somerville College, Oxford, watercolour on paper, 57 x 40 cm.[24]
30)  John Ruskin, Portrait of Rose La Touche, ? 1861, Ruskin Library, Lancaster, pencil, watercolour and bodycolour.
31)  Charles Fairfax Murray, John Ruskin, 1875, Tate Britain, London, watercolour and gouache on paper, 476 x 311 mm.
32)  John Ruskin, Study of Verbena in Carpaccio’s “Dream of St Ursula”, Private Collection (Sir Stephen Oliver), 1876-7, watercolour on paper, 37 x 31 cm.[25]
33)  John Ruskin, San Giorgio Maggiore, the Basin of St Mark’s and a Balcony of Casa-Contarini-Fasan, 1876, Private Collection, pencil, watercolour, bodycolour, 1876.
34)  Vincenzo Catena, (prev. att to Titian), Portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti, 1523-31, National Gallery, London, , oil on canvas, 97.2 x 79.4 cm.
35)  Vittore Carpaccio, St George and the Dragon, 1502, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice, tempera on canvas, 141 x 360 cm.
36)  Frederick Hollyer, Photograph of Ruskin, 1894 and Venetian Sunset.




[1] John Ruskin, Praeterita, ed. Francis O’Gorman  (Oxford, 2012), 187.
[2] Ruskin quoted in John Batchelor, John Ruskin: No Wealth But Life, 2000, 21
[3] Robert Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 11.
[4] Robert Hewison, “Ruskin and the Gothic Revival: his research on Venetian architecture” in Ruskin’s Artists: Studies in the Victorian Visual Economy, (Ashgate, 2000), 53-69, 57.
[5] Batchelor, John Ruskin, 105.
[6] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1. Ruskin’s disquiet with the female body is well-known, but the carnal may have become more of a problem for Ruskin when he reviewed Turner’s legacy in the form of drawings and sketches in the basement of the National Gallery in 1857, some of which were pornographic. See Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 254f.
[7] “But for that porter's opening, I should, have written the Stones of Chamouni, instead of the Stones of Venice[…] but Tintoret swept me in away into the mare maggiore of the schools of painting which crowned the power and perished in the fall of Venice; so forcing me into the study of Venice herself; and through that into what else I have traced or told of the laws of national strength and virtue."
[8] Cited in Colin Harrison and Christopher Newall, The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, catalogue, (Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, 2010). 
[9] Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 308.
[10] Modern Painters, Vol 3.
[11] Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 266. Hewison considers Ruskin’s account in Praeterita (1888) the most likely of the sequence of events leading from copying the Veronese in the galleries to visiting a Protestant church. The autobiography version has the visit to the church in the morning followed by working on the Veronese in the afternoon, described more in terms of a spiritual experience than the service in church. The Veronese has been moved from its original location and is has now been attributed to Paolo’s brother, Benedetto,(Hewison,269-270). See also Andrew Tate’s “Archangel Veronese: Ruskin as Protestant spectator” in Ruskin’s Artists, 132-145, 133: “Ruskin’s inclination to describe moments of inspiration, when confronted with beauty, in the language of religious conversion was established long before the Turin crisis.”
[12] Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 253.
[13] Hewison suggest that in some passages on nature and colour in Ruskin’s Modern Painters are influenced by the contrast between colorito and disegno.
[14] Hewison, Ruskin on Venice, 276.
[15] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 28.
[16] "This was intended for a new plate for the Architecture of Venice - partly from Daguerrotype - and partly from materials - but not from nature - by J.R. for his Sorella"
recto: inscribed in graphite in upper left "3763
[17] But for that porter’s opening [the door of the Scuola], I should, have written the Stones of Chamouni, instead of the Stones of Venice[…] but Tintoret swept me in away into the mare maggiore of the schools of painting which crowned the power and perished in the fall of Venice; so forcing me into the study of Venice herself; and through that into what else I have traced or told of the laws of national strength and virtue.”
[18] “ I must leave this picture to work its will on the spectator, for it is beyond all analysis, and above all praise.”
[19] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 26.
[20] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 38. Made on a visit with Holman-Hunt in 1869.
[21] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 39. Made on a visit with Holman-Hunt in 1869.
[22] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 33.
[23] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 41. Made for the Drawing School in Oxford in 1876.
[24] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy, no. 42.
[25] The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy , no. 43: “Last night, St Ursula sent me her dianthus “out of her bedroom window with her love.” “She sent me the living dianthus […] but she had sent me also, in the morning, from England, a dried sprig of the other flower in her window, the sacred vervain.”

Tuesday 24 June 2014

Week 9 :Turner and Venetian Painting

Miss Provis and the Secrets of the Venetian Masters.

 James Gillray,  Titianus Redivivus; or the Seven Wise Men Consulting the New Venetian Oracle, - a Scene in the Academic Grove, 1797, etching and watercolour, British Museum, London.

J. M. W. Turner, Self-Portrait, 1799, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 743 x 584 mm. LINK

Workshop of Titian, Venus and Adonis, about 1554, NG, London, oil on canvas, 177.9 x 188. 9 cms. LINK

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, NG, London, 152-23, oil on canvas, 176.5 x 191 cm. LINK

It might be thought that debates about the true character of Venetian paintings, of “Venetian colour” are a product of the modern age, but they can be traced back to the late 18th century when Turner was just setting off on his career. In 1790, a young woman called Anne Provis declared confidently that she possessed the “Venetian secret”, supposedly kept in a transcript from a lost manual that had revealed the techniques and methods of the earlier painters. For ten guineas, Miss Provis and her father were prepared to share the “secrets” of the Venetian masters, and such was their success in garnering interest that Provis became something of a celebrity to the extent that Gillray satirised her mercilessly. His etching of 1797 shows the credible academicians and connoisseurs beneath a caricature of Miss Provis applying her technique to a “masterpiece.” Significantly, Turner is not among their number; he disdained to participate in such a stunt; his name appears on a portfolio of sceptics attacked by a monkey.[1] Despite his rightful distrust of Miss Provis’s “Secret”, Turner was deeply fascinated by the techniques of the Venetians; and he did later experiment with “clear, deep glazes of colour” to the detriment of his later canvases.[2] In the early phase of his career, in a pre-National Gallery age, Turner had to seek Venetian old masters in the collections of aristocrats such as the Duke of Bridgwater whose impressive collection was shown in 1798. Most importantly, the Duke’s holdings included an impressive group of Venetian masters presided over by Titian. Another important source would have been the holdings of Angerstein who owned many pictures such as Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, which would eventually go to the National Gallery. 
   
Turner’s Dialogue with Titian

Johann Carl Loth (after lost Titian), The Death of St Peter Martyr, 1691, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 500 x 306 cm.  

 J.M.W. Turner, Composition study for Venus mourning the Dead Adonis, c. 1802-3, Tate Britain, pencil and chalk on blue paper, from the “Calais Pier” sketchbook. LINK

J.M.W. Turner, Holy Family, Tate Britain, 1803, oil on canvas, 102.2 x 141.6 cm. LINK

Titian, The Holy Family with a Shepherd, c. 1510, NG, London, oil on canvas, 99.1 x 139.1 cm. LINK
Thanks to a lull in the fighting between France and England in 1802 during the Peace of Amiens, Turner took advantage to visit Paris and the Louvre; the result was his “Louvre sketch book” containing many sketches and ricordi after Titian and other Venetian painters.[3]  At the top of Turner’s “wish list” was Titian’s spectacular Death of St Peter Martyr which sadly was to later perish in a fire at the church of San Giovanni e Paolo in 1867. Between 1530 and 1867, the Titian masterpiece only left Venice once when it became one of Napoleon’s trophies of war.[4] Turner’s Louvre sketch book is full of notes on this picture, some of which he used for a lecture he delivered at the Royal Academy several years later. In that lecture Turner said the following: The highest honour that landscape has as yet, she received from the hands of Titian…the triumph even of Landscape may be safely said to exist in his divine picture of St Peter Martyr.”[5] During his nine days at the Louvre, Turner assiduously copied pictures by Titian and Giorgione, mainly in watercolour, though it is interesting to note that Turner didn’t make a copy of the St Peter Martyr because it had been altered by recent restoration at the Louvre. He also copied Giorgione’s Fête Champetre which was then believed to be by Titian. Back in London, Turner slowly assimilated the lessons learned from studying other masters like Veronese (see below), the 17th century artist P. F. Mola, and of course Titian. These provided the governing models for Turner’s large vertical canvas depicting a subject beloved of the Venetians: Venus and Adonis. Turner’s “Calais Pier” sketchbook shows a composition study of Venus and Adonis, probably influenced by a painting of the same subject in Angerstein’s collection; and in his oil version he applied “the strong vertical weight of Titian’s trees to his own figure groupings.”[6] Another essay at a pastiche of Titian is the little Holy Family which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803. Based on an early Titian in the NG, then doing the rounds of the showrooms, this pastiche was received negatively by the press and worse drew the criticism of fellow artists like Fuseli who damned Turner for his lack of finish in the picture. Highly sensitive, Turner refrained from painting in Titian’s manner until the 1820s a decade when Titian became more popular thanks to the publication of Sir Abraham Hume’s Notices of the Life and Works of Titian (1829).

Turner and Veronese.

J.M. W. Turner, Copies of Venetian paintings (Palma, Tintoretto and Veronese), with notes by James Hakewill, 1819, Tate Britain, pen and ink on paper. LINK

 Paolo Veronese, The Family of Darius before Alexander, NG, London, 1565-67, oil on canvas, 236. 2 x 474. 9 cm. LINK

 Paolo Veronese, Votive Portrait of Doge Sebastiano Venier, 1581-82, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas, 285 x 565 cm.

J. M.W. Turner, Copies of Paintings by Veronese in the Sala del Collegio of the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1819, Tate Britain, pen and ink on paper. LINK
Unsurprisingly, Turner’s researches at the Louvre also involved Veronese, but for some reason he did not get to see the artist’s Finding of Moses in 1802. Admired chiefly for his colour, Turner drew on Veronese for amplification of his ideas on history painting. Turner stressed the role of architecture within history painting, drawing on such illustrious masterpieces as Veronese’s gigantic Marriage at Cana, which cannot have escaped his notice at the Louvre. He also mentioned the lesser-known Mercury, Herse and Aglauros in the Orleans collection, and now in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge. As Worrall says, it is clear that though Turner respected Veronese as a colourist, he went beyond such common conventions and attempted to “elucidate the part played by light and shade in intensifying the formal relationships between colours.” Turner would exploit these ideas in his own version of the Mercury, now in a private collection. Such attention to chiaroscuro, colour and form would re-emerge in the writings of Delacroix who shared the same sophisticated views about Veronese as Turner.[7] Though now owned by the NG, Veronese’s showpiece Family of Darius was in the Palazzo Pisani in Venice in Turner’s time. Unfortunately, Turner does not seem to have made the best use of this magnificent canvas, or to have “observed particularly” as he was told to do. Turner did, however, visit the Ducal palace where he enjoyed Veronese’s series of allegories on the ceiling of the Sala del Collegio. Some of these are recorded in his sketchbooks.

Turner and Canaletto.

Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, The Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day, c. 1733-34, Royal Collection, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 125.4 cm.

Thomas Girtin, (after Canaletto), The Rialto Bridge, c. 1796-8, British Museum, London, pen and ink. 

William Marlow, Capriccio: St Paul’s Cathedral and the Grand Canal, c. 1795-97, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 104.1 cm. LINK

J.M.W. Turner, Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace, and Custom House, Venice: Canaletti Painting, exh. R.A. 1833, Tate Britain, oil on mahogany, 51.1 x 81.6 cm. LINK
Turner’s first exposure to Canaletto’s art almost certainly would have been via Dr Munro, a physician specialising in mental illness who owned a collection of Old Master drawings. Turner and his associate Thomas Girtin used to make drawings in his Academy, which contained drawings by Rembrandt, Claude, Wilson, Canaletto, Morland, Gainsborough, Sandy and other water colourists.[8] Even if Turner had not attended Dr Munro’s academy, he would not have been as unaware of Canaletto since the former had trained as a topographer and the latter took that cartographical approach towards representing Venice. Munro collected drawings but direct knowledge of Canaletto’s paintings would require access to royal or aristocratic collections. Turner would probably have known the twenty four Canalettos in the Duke of Bedford’s collection, who was a cousin of Turner’s patron the Earl of Essex. Entry to the Duke of Bedford’s holdings might have been facilitated by Girtin whose watercolours pleased the Duke.[9] Another conduit to Canaletto would have been the set of thirty eight engravings made by Antonio Visentini, whose emphasis on the Grand Canal was of interest to Canaletto. Turner would eventually dispense with the clarity of Canaletto’s views returning to technique and materials rather than perspective and delineation. Turner was to award Canaletto the ultimate accolade by painting his predecessor in the act of representing Venice: Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace, and Custom House, Venice: Canaletti Painting in 1833.

Turner, Venice and the 19th Century Romantic Tradition.

J.M.W. Turner, Venice: The Ducal Palace, for Samuel Roger’s ‘Italy’ , c. 1826-27, Tate Britain, watercolour, 24 x 30.6 cm. LINK

J.M.W. Turner, Juliet and her Nurse, exh. R.A. 1836, Sra Amalia Lacroze de Fortebat, Argentina, 1836, oil on canvas, 92 x 123 cm.

J.M. W. Turner, Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute, c. 1835, Metropolitan Museum of Art, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 122.2 cm.

J.M. W. Turner, Venice: the Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore, exh. R.A. 1834, NGA, Washington, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm.
Turner may have taken to Byron because he identified with the poet’s persona of isolation, aesthetic contemplation and the romantic ideal in general. On a more pragmatic level, Turner illustrated volumes of poetry during the 1820s and 1830s like the highly successful new edition of Samuel Roger’s Italy (1830). Though a meeting between Turner and Byron in these literary circles is probably apocryphal, the artist’s watercolours for this project suggest that Turner was viewing Byron and Roger’s views of Italy through the lens of his own visit to the city in 1819. Actual words in Rogers Italy may have inspired Turner’s painting of a Shakespearean scene set against a Venetian backdrop- Juliet and her Nurse. Thoroughly lambasted in an anonymous article in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1836, the painting was stoutly defended by none other than John Ruskin in a reply to the magazine in the same year.[10] Like Turner, Ruskin shared a love of Byron, Shakespeare and the romantic literary tradition. As Ruskin noted, “Byron was to be his master in verse, as Turner in colour.” More on Ruskin in the final installment. 

Slides

1.      James Gillray,  Titianus Redivivus; or the Seven Wise Men Consulting the New Venetian Oracle, - a Scene in the Academic Grove, 1797, etching and watercolour, British Museum, London,
2.      Turner, Self-Portrait, 1799, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 743 x 584 mm.
3.      Workshop of Titian, Venus and Adonis, about 1554, NG, London, oil on canvas, 177.9 x 188. 9 cms.
4.      Johann Carl Loth (after lost Titian), The Death of St Peter Martyr, 1691, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, 500 x 306 cm.  
5.      Martin Rota (after Titian), The Death of St Peter Martyr, engraving, Correr Museum, Venice,
6.      J.M. W. Turner, Interior of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, with Titian’s St Peter Martyr altarpiece, 1833, Tate Britain, from the “Venice” sketchbook, pencil, 10.9 x 20.3 mm each.
7.      J.M.W. Turner, Venus and Adonis, c. 1803-5, Private Collection, oil on canvas, 59 x 47 cm.  
8.      J.M.W. Turner, Composition study for Venus mourning the Dead Adonis, c. 1802-3, Tate Britain, pencil and chalk on blue paper, from the “Calais Pier” sketchbook.
9.      J.M.W. Turner, Holy Family, Tate Britain, 1803, oil on canvas, 102.2 x 141.6 cm.
10.  Titian, The Holy Family with a Shepherd, c. 1510, NG, London, oil on canvas, 99.1 x 139.1 cm.
11.  Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, NG, London, 152-23, oil on canvas, 176.5 x 191 cm.
12.  J.M.W. Turner, Copies of Paintings in Venice by Tintoretto and Titian, 1819, Tate Britain, pen and ink on paper.
13.  J.M.W. Turner, Bacchus and Ariadne, exh R.A., 1840, with original frame, Tate Britain, London, oil on canvas, 78.7 x 78.7 cm.
14.  Paolo Veronese, The Family of Darius before Alexander, NG, London, 1565-67, oil on canvas, 236. 2 x 474. 9 cm.
15.  Paolo Veronese. Hermes, Herse and Aglauros, c. 1580, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, oil on canvas, 232.4 x 173 cm.
16.  J. M.W. Turner, Copies of Paintings by Veronese in the Sala del Collegio of the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1819, Tate Britain, pen and ink on paper.
17.  Paolo Veronese, Votive Portrait of Doge Sebastiano Venier, 1581-82, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Oil on canvas, 285 x 565 cm.
18.  Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, The Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day, c. 1733-34, Royal Collection, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 125.4 cm.
19.  William Marlow, Capriccio: St Paul’s Cathedral and the Grand Canal, c. 1795-97, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 104.1 cm.
20.  Antonio Visentini (after Canaletto), The Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day, c. 1742, from Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum.
21.  Thomas Girtin, (after Canaletto), The Rialto Bridge, c. 1796-8, British Museum, London, pen and ink.  
22.  J.M.W. Turner, San Giorgio Maggiore-Early Morning, 1819, Tate Britain, from the “Como and Venice” sketchbook, watercolour on paper, 223 x 287 mm.
23.  J.M.W. Turner, The Punta della Dogana, with the Zitelle in the Distance, 1819, Tate Britain, watercolour, 22.3 x 28.5 mm, from the “Como and Venice” sketchbook.
24.  J.M.W. Turner, The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Hotel Europa, exh R.A., 1842, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 61.6 x 92.7 cm.
25.  J.M.W. Turner, Venice: Looking East towards San Pietro di Castello- Early Morning, 1819, Tate Britain, watercolour, 22.3 x 28.7, from the “Como and Venice” sketchbook.
26.  J.M.W. Turner, Venice: The Campanile of San Marco and the Doge’s Palace, 1819, Tate Britain, from the “Como and Venice” sketchbook, graphite and watercolour, 225 x 289 mm.
27.  J.M.W. Turner, Venice: The Ducal Palace, for Samuel Roger’s ‘Italy’ , c. 1826-27, watercolour, 24 x 30.6 cm.
28.  Samuel Prout, The Rialto Bridge, Venice from the North, poss exh at OWCS, 1827, Private Collection, watercolour, 74 x 114 cm.
29.  J.M.W. Turner, Juliet and her Nurse, exh. R.A. 1836, Sra Amalia Lacroze de Fortebat, Argentina, 1836, oil on canvas, 92 x 123 cm.
30.  Richard Parkes Bonington, Venice: Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession, exh Paris, 1828, Tate Britain, oil on canvas, 114.3 x 162.6 cm.
31.  Richard Parkes Bonington, The Grand Canal, Venice, 1826, Tate Britain, graphite and gouache on paper, 206 x 289 mm.
32.  Clarkson Stanfield, Venice from the Dogana, exh R.A. 1833, Bowood House, oil on canvas, 130 x 165.4 cm.
33.  J.M.W. Turner, Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace, and Custom House, Venice: Canaletti Painting, exh. R.A. 1833, Tate Britain, oil on mahogany, 51.1 x 81.6 cm.[11]
34.  Detail: Canaletto Painting en plein air.
35.  J.M. W. Turner, Venice: the Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore, exh. R.A. 1834, NGA, Washington, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm.
36.  J.M. W. Turner, Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute, c. 1835, Metropolitan Museum of Art, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 122.2 cm.




[1] See Ian Worral, “Turner and Venetian Painting” in exh cat, Turner and Venice, Tate Britain, 2003-4, 51.
[2] Ibid.
[3] According to Jack Lindsay  (Turner, 100 f) he made thee coloured drawings of the CC, was fascinated by the colour of Titian’s Entombment
[4] Turner and the Masters, exh cat., Tate Britain, 2009-10, 138.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Worral, 2003-4, 57. The Angerstein Venus and Adonis (NG 34) is catalogued as a workshop piece.
[7] See for example, Delacroix, Journal, 29th Sep, 1850.  
[8] Lindsay, Turner, 40.
[9] Worrall, Tate Britain, 2004-5, 43.
[10] The author was the Rev. John Eagles. See David Blayney Brown, The Art of J.M.W. Turner, (Eagle, 2001), 80.
[11] Turner and the Masters, no. 67.