The Grand Canal

Bonington's Grand Canal from 1826-27 is one of his most celebrated Venetian works, capturing the light and atmospheric quality of the famous waterway with the spontaneous freshness that distinguished his best Venetian paintings. The Grand Canal was the most painted architectural and waterway subject in Venice, and Bonington's contribution to the tradition stands out for the specific quality of its light — that flat Venetian afternoon light that treats architecture, water, and sky with equal luminous intensity. Turner visited Venice in 1819 and was working toward his own great Venetian paintings; Bonington arrived in 1826 and painted Venetian subjects with a different but equally compelling approach, his smaller-scale oil sketches having an immediacy that contrasted with Turner's more deliberate large-scale compositions.

The oil on canvas shows Bonington's brilliant facility with luminous, transparent color and fluid brushwork, rendering Venetian architecture and reflections in water with a spontaneity and light that anticipates later Impressionist approaches.