The Grasset Canaletto in Context

The Grasset Canaletto owes its unique qualities to the particularly auspicious moment in the artist’s development at which it was created. In common with the work of most great artists, Canaletto’s style shows constant evolution and a striving for new challenges is evident throughout his career. This painting dates from the 1730s, the decade which the artist devoted almost exclusively to the painting of views of Venice, the great majority for British patrons. It is the period when the quality of his work is at its most consistent, and the fruits of which are often regarded as his most ‘characteristic’. They include the great series of twenty-four views executed for John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford in c. 1732-36 and now at Woburn Abbey; the subsequent series of twenty for Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, of which four are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Riva degli Schiavoni, looking West of c. 1735-36 for Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, now in Sir John Soane’s Museum; The Molo on Ascension Day and A Regatta on the Grand Canal in the Royal Collection; and The Grand Canal, looking North-East from the Palazzo Balbi and the Volta di Canal to the Rialto Bridge and The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day with the Bucintoro returning to the Molo for Sir Robert Walpole (both in private collections, the former sold in these Rooms in July 2005, for what remains a considerable record price for a work by Canaletto).

Around 1738 the mood of Canaletto’s work changes significantly, the light becoming distinctly colder and more translucent, the architecture more sharply delineated than in any other phase of his career and the detail very much more than the eye could naturally assimilate. It retains this character until around 1742, when the sunshine returns. This stage in the painter’s development produced more than its fair share of masterpieces, including The Grand Canal at San Simeone Piccolo in the National Gallery, London, which is unequalled in its translucence and precision; The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day with the Bucintoro returning to the Molo at Holkham Hall; and five superb pairs of Venetian views executed for Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds, of which components are in the National Gallery, London (two), the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco, Milan (two), the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard and the Detroit institute of Arts.

The Grasset Canaletto is on the cusp of the change between these two phases, combining the sunshine of the style of the earlier 1730s with much of the precision of the colder style of around 1740. With similar clouds like icing sugar spread across the sky and similar treatment of the boats and the water in which they sit, the painting is clearly close in date to the spectacular, panoramic view of The Bacino di San Marco, looking East in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which is often considered Canaletto’s masterpiece. Painted for Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle, who was in Venice on the Grand Tour in 1738-39 (certainly including November 1738), the Boston painting may well have been painted in 1739. The Grasset painting, which is less frosty, may well have immediately preceded it.

Most commissions won by Canaletto in the 1730s were arranged through Joseph Smith, a Venetian resident who was to serve as British Consul in the years 1744-60 and who was an early patron of the artist. Smith seems to have had some kind of contract as the painter’s agent from around 1730, and was largely responsible for his career flourishing to the point of making him the household name throughout Europe that he remains today. Smith may have been partly responsible for the high levels of quality control evident in Canaletto’s work of the 1730s and for the stylistic cohesion of components of commissions, notably the large sets of canvases for the Dukes of Bedford and Marlborough. In the years around 1740 several significant commissions resulted in groups of paintings wildly inconsistent in quality and style, including that for the Earl of Carlisle which included the Boston Bacino di San Marco (fig. 1) and that for Henry Fiennes Pelham Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln and later 2nd Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which included, along with far less impressive works, the similarly exceptional Piazzetta looking North-West now in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. One reason for this may be that, while we know little about any studio assistance that Canaletto may have had during most of his career, we know that the studio was unusually crowded in the years around 1740, including at least four other painters, not least his highly precocious nephew Bernardo Bellotto. Another reason for inconsistency may be that Smith’s control of the painter’s commissions was no longer as exclusive as it had been.

There is no evidence that the Grasset painting, along with the view in the opposite direction which originally served as its pendant and three other Venetian views of slightly different dimensions, all painted around the same date for the Duke of Kent, were the results of a visit by the patron to Venice. They may well have been ordered from London, like those painted a few years earlier for Sir Robert Walpole to hang at 10 Downing Street. It is, however, certain that they were ordered through Smith, since this painting was one of the relatively few selected by Smith to be published in etched form in the second, 1742, edition of Antonio Visentini’s Prospectus Magni Canalis Venetiarum, which made available to a wide audience the compositions of paintings by Canaletto commissioned through him (fig. 2). This commission was one of the last to be entirely executed by Canaletto to the exacting standards of the 1730s. The painter was clearly inspired by painting a section of the Grand Canal which he had not depicted before, in an entirely original composition. What is surprising given the success of result is that it was to remain unique, never even copied by a lesser hand.