Approach to Venice
J. M. W. Turner·1844
Historical Context
Turner's Approach to Venice (exhibited 1844) at the National Gallery of Art depicts the moment of arrival at the city from the sea — the lagoon mist slowly revealing towers and domes as the vessel approaches. Venice had become Turner's supreme subject for the meditation on light, water, and the dissolution of solid form that drove his late style, and the approach across the lagoon — where the city seems to float on the water without firm foundation — was its most concentrated expression. This late Venice painting, from his last decade, shows his mature style at its most extreme: the solid world of architecture and water barely distinguishable from each other and from the luminous sky, all dissolved into colored light.
Technical Analysis
Venice appears as a golden mirage on the horizon, its forms barely distinguishable from the surrounding atmosphere of light. Turner's palette of warm golds and cool blues creates an almost abstract composition unified by luminous atmosphere.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the city barely visible on the horizon: Turner depicts Venice as a golden mirage dissolving into the surrounding atmosphere of light, the ultimate expression of his dematerializing approach to solid form.
- ◆Look at the quality of the lagoon light: the specific flat, pearlescent light of the Venetian lagoon — created by the reflection of sky and water on each other across miles of shallow water — is captured with extraordinary sensitivity.
- ◆Observe how the foreground water leads the eye toward the distant city: the compositional depth is achieved through atmospheric gradation rather than perspectival lines.
- ◆Find individual buildings within the general luminous mass: Turner identifies specific towers and domes as suggestions of architectural fact within the overwhelming atmospheric effect.
Provenance
William Wethered [d. 1863], King's Lynn, Norfolk, and by 1849, London. Benjamin Godfrey Windus [1790-1867],[1] Tottenham, after 1847;[2] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 20 June 1853, no. 5); (Ernest Gambart, Paris, Brussels, and London). Charles Birch, Edgbaston and London; (sale, Messrs. Foster, London, 28 February 1856, no. 57); bought by Wallis. Joseph Gillott, Edgbaston, by 1860. (Ernest Gambart, Paris, Brussels, and London); purchased 1863 by (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); sold 1863 to James Fallows, who exchanged it later that year for pictures by Alfred Elmore and P.F. Poole with (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); sold to (J. Smith, London).[3] Bought 1870 from the executors of Smith's estate by (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); sold 1871 to W. Moir; passed to Mrs. Emma Moir; sold 1899 to (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); purchased the same year by Sir Charles Clow Tennant, 1st bt. [1823-1906], The Glen, near Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland; by descent to his grandson, Christopher Grey Tennant, 2nd baron Glenconner [1899-1983], The Glen;[4] sold July 1923 to (Charles Carstairs for M. Knoedler & Co., London and New York); purchased November 1923 by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 28 December 1934 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA. [1] Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, _The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner_, 2 vols., 2nd rev. ed., (New Haven and London, [1977] 1984), I: no. 412, begin their provenance with Windus. [2] The picture is not mentioned by Thomas Tudor, who visited Windus on 21 June 1847, as being among the latter's collection of Turners at that time (Butlin and Joll, as per note 1 above, I: 259). [3] This is probably John Mountjoy Smith (1805-1869), who took over the firm when his father, John Smith (1781-by 1855), the picture dealer of 137 New Bond Street, retired in 1837. The information was kindly provided by Julia Armstrong-Totten; see her e-mail, 1 March 2011, in NGA curatorial files. (In the 1992 NGA catalogue of its British paintings, the elder Smith was incorrectly suggested as possibly being this Smith.) For more about the Smith firm, see Charles Sebag-Montefiore, with Julia I. Armstrong-Totten, _A Dynasty of Dealers: John Smith and Successors, 1801-1924: A Study of the Art Market in Nineteenth-Century London_, Arundel and London, 2013. [4] NGA curatorial files.
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