Don’t miss our free online talk exploring how Canaletto’s paintings of Venice have been used to measure changing sea levels 7pm, 8 July.

F. J. B. Watson. Canaletto. 2nd, rev. ed. London, 1954, p. 11, dates the Harvey series to the mid-1730s. Image Credit: View on the Grand Canal: From the Palazzo Bembo to that of Grimani Calerghi, now Vendramini. From the Woburn Abbey Collection.

Erkelens, Casper (1 March 2020). "Perspective on Canaletto's Paintings of Piazza San Marco in Venice". Art and Perception. brill.com. 8: 49–67. doi: 10.1163/22134913-20191131. S2CID 212940083 . Retrieved 26 October 2022. Canaletto arrived in London in 1746. There were, according to The Guardian's arts correspondent Mark Brown, two key reasons for his move. First was the war in Europe which meant that it was no longer feasible for wealthy British travellers to undertake their Grand Tours: "when the money stopped coming to Canaletto, he decided to go to the money". Second, there was (following peace with France) a "new confidence and an economic boom" in Britain. As Brown put it, "There was new eclectic architecture springing up; culturally Britain was rediscovering and falling in love with Shakespeare; it was the time of Rule Britannia. A wide-eyed Canaletto was swept up by how vibrant and exciting Britain was and virtually everything he painted was new or about to be new." Completed early in his career, and while still in Rome, this work is an example of the veduta ideata style in which real and imaginary combinations are used to heighten the picture's sense of drama. Canaletto had used real architectural structures as the template for his painting, but, in a gesture of artistic licence, he combined the Roman architectural elements of his immediate surroundings with those belonging to his native Venice. Once more, the theatrical element of the painting reflects Canaletto's early training, yet the vivid attention to fine detail in which he renders the landscape sets the bar for the rest of his career. Indeed, in her analysis of the painting, Kowalczyk suggested that Canaletto had established "a discourse on classical and Renaissance Venetian architecture that would guide his future creations." Kowalczyk also speculated that the figure seated under the arch in the left foreground is a depiction of Canaletto himself, here engaged "in the act of measuring the buildings with a pencil." Whether or not the figure was autobiographical, the idea that the artist could be charged with the responsibility of capturing a memory of the city was an obligation that Canaletto took to heart and established his position within the pantheon of Italian masters. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue presenting the latest scholarship on the complex stylistic relationships between Canaletto, his associates and rivals – the major practitioners of Venetian view painting in the 18th century.

Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697– 19 April 1768), better known as Canaletto (Italian:[kanaˈletto]), was an Italian painter of city views or vedute, of Venice, Rome, and London. He also painted imaginary views (referred to as capricci), although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique. In the period from 1746 to 1756 he worked in England where he painted many sights of London. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph Smith, whose large collection of Canaletto's works was sold to King George III in 1762. Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, was born in Venice, the son of a theatrical scene painter. He was very influential, famed for his precisely depicted and evocative views of the city (vedute). Canaletto's early pictures for local patrons are his most accomplished: these carefully designed, individual, and atmospheric studies include 'The Stonemason's Yard'. a b c Links, J. G. (April 1981). "Canaletto in England". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 129 (5297): 301, 304. JSTOR 41373290. However, while visitors to Venice today are a world away from the Grand Tourists of the 18th century, Canaletto's influence has endured.W. G. Constable. Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697–1768. Ed. J. G. Links. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1976, vol. 1, pl. 11; vol. 2, p. 188, no. 2. Vittorio Moschini. Canaletto. French ed. (Italian ed., 1954). Milan, 1955, pp. 22, 30, 38, suggests a date of about 1741 for the Harvey series, relating the pictures to Canaletto's etchings, specifically the lagoon capriccio of 1741. The paintings on display were commissioned in the 1730s by the fourth Duke of Bedford, and are considered the absolute best of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice.