[CHAPTER XXXIX]
1833: AGED FIFTY-EIGHT
HE PAINTS HIS FIRST 'VENICE' PICTURE AND RE-PURCHASES SOME OF HIS OWN DRAWINGS AT AUCTION
Venice, 'the last home of his imagination,' if we exclude the mountains of Switzerland, and the Thames of England, where he found his final solace, begins to inspire his brush, but not the visionary Venice that he was to evolve later, visions of colour and light which seem to be floating from sight even as we look at them. First the spade work—that was Turner's way. As he began painting the sea from the pictures of Van de Velde, so he began painting Venice from the pictures of Canaletto, and in this first interpretation, or rather illustration, of Venice, he introduced, in his quaint, admiring way, his hero for the moment, at work. 'The Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Canaletto Painting,' is a sober topographical performance compared with his later pictures of the bride of the Adriatic. Indeed the quotation from Rogers's Italy gives more of a lilt to the imagination than the picture:—
'There is a glorious city in the sea,
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.'
No fewer than twenty-seven pictures of Venice by Turner have been catalogued.
Between 1833 and 1835 were published the beautiful series of The Rivers of France known as Turner's Annual Tour. The letterpress was by Leitch Ritchie, but they did not travel together 'as their tastes were dissimilar.' Ritchie gives the following description of the artist's methods:—