By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
Turner 's San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina, oil on canvas, R.A. 1843, Turner Bequest, Tate Britain ( Wilton P406). Ruskin pointed out that there is no church of San Benedetto in Venice that could be visible in such a view, and surmised that the artist may have wrongly recalled the name attached to the block of houses on the left, San Biagio ( Works, 13.165).
This was one of Ruskin 's favourites among Turner 's oil paintings, as he had told the artist in an anecdote related in his diary entry for 29 April 1844:
'Yesterday, when I called with my father on Turner, he was kinder than I ever remember. He shook hands most cordially with my father, wanted us to have a glass of wine, asked us to go upstairs into the gallery. When there, I went immediately in search of the "Sol di Venezia," saying it was my favourite. "I thought," said Turner, "it was 'St. Benedetto.'" It was flattering that he remembered I had told him this' ( Works, 3.251n)
'Take all in all,' Ruskin considered, 'I think this the best Venetian picture of Turner's which he has left to us' ( Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1857; Works, 13.166). What he admired was not just its rendering of the truth of the scene - in 1852 he came across exactly the kind of boat depicted, peculiar to the route from Fusina - but the peerless evocation of that part of Venice:
'The buildings have, in reality, that proportion and character of mass, as one glides up the centre of the stream: they float exactly in that strange, mirage-ful, wistful way in the sea mist - rosy ghosts of houses without foundations; the blue line of poplars and copse about the Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the horizon; the flowing gold of the water, and quiet gold of the air, face and reflect each other just so; the boats rest so, with their black prows poised in the midst of the amber flame, or glide by so, the boatman stretched far aslope upon his deep-laid oar' ( Works, 13.165-166).
J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851
The San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina 1843
Oil on canvas, 62.5x92cm
Exhibitions: RA 1843 (554); Amsterdam, Berne, Paris (repr.); Brussels, Liege (39); Venice (repr.) and Rome (48, repr.) 1947-8; RA 1974-5 (535)
Engraving:
Engraved by J. C. Armytage, 1859
Steel engraving, 17.5x25.6cm
Engraved for the Turner Gallery, 1859-1875
Provenance: Turner Bequest 1856; transferred to the Tate Gallery, London, 1968
Further Comments: A watercolour and pencil drawing entitled 'Venice: The Giudecca, Looking towards Fusina' of 1840, last exhibited at the Tate Gallery, 1993 (14, repr.), is the original sketch for the 'San Benedetto Looking towards Fusina'.
Collection: Tate Gallery, London