The Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exceptions carry canvass painted with bright colours, the favourite design for the centre being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favourite colours being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. The radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting; but it is strange that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons, Turner alone should have availed himself of them. Nothing could be more faithful than the boat which was the principal object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with colour; finally and especially, the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. All these, however, are comparatively minor merits (though not the blaze of colour which the artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances), but the peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid colour fell from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance the city and crowded boats threw down some playing lines, but these still left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning sky. This was divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the local colour of the water was seen, pure aqua-marine (a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed truth), but still there remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above had no distinct details and was pure faint grey, with broken white vestiges of cloud; it gave no help, therefore. But there the water lay, no dead grey flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away, as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by perspective. Now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it is his having done this which made me say above that ‘no man had ever painted the surface of calm water but Turner.’ The San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in one of the Canale della Giudecca the specific green colour of the water is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue.
JOHN RUSKIN.
VENICE UNDER THE STARLIGHT
Embark at the Piazzetta at eleven o’clock on a clear sweet starlight evening, and tell the gondolier to go into the canal of the Giudecca. The gondola enters on the golden track, you have left the custom-house on your right. The stars touch with light the gold ball which carries Fortune on it, and the lamp at the foot of the portico, the steps of which run down into the water, lights up the white façade, and makes it reflect itself in the slightly rippled waters. The faubourg of the Giudecca is on our left—a red-brown by daylight and dark by night; a few scattered lanterns alone break this black ground like the gold sparkles which appear and disappear on a piece of burning paper, and sometimes under the stars, as in the picture of the English painter Orchardson, two lovers exchange their soft vows ‘in the pale light of stars’ under the brightly spangled sky.
The Giudecca is long and low, and becomes faint and almost bluish as it prolongs itself towards the horizon. The black keels of some boats at anchor, their masts and fine cordage, outline themselves distinctly against the clear sky; the dome of the Redentore, the church of the faubourg, rounds itself above the houses. On the right we have the Zattere and their quays with polished flagstones, looking white in the rays of the moon, with the great palaces, regular and noble, the little deserted jetties, and here and there the bridges at the openings of the canals.
The Giudecca is dark; the Zattere is as light as day, but with that veiled illumination which the moon throws over everything it floods with its rays. The silence is profound and the calmness undisturbed; the distant echoes, the solemn striking of the hour by the clock of St. Mark’s, the song of a solitary sailor guarding his felucca which he has brought timber-laden from Dalmatia, the voice of a belated gondolier who sits swinging his legs in that nocturnal reverie which is like the kief of the East: who can render this impression at once sweet and solemn, the incomparable charms which lulls all longings, and attaches us to Venice with an imperishable love?
CHARLES YRIARTE.
TO VENICE: A FAREWELL
Venice, farewell, your evening tints are shed,—
Soft crimson shadows at this hour you lay