The View Painter & the Eighteenth Century. 6

Views of Canaletto’s Views of Venice.

Giovanni Antonio Canal was born in Venice, near the Rialto on 28th October, 1697, the son of a theatrical painter. Why and when he was named Canaletto, “the little canal” is not known.¹ Nor is it documented if Canaletto met the founder of the vedute school of Venetian painting, Carlevarijs, but an encounter seems highly likely since the latter painted the Rialto. Canaletto was first introduced to English collectors by an Irishman, Owen McSwiney, who was a friend of the artist’s major patron Joseph Smith. In 1730, Smith emerged in the role he played for many years: “the purveyor of Canaletto’s work to the English visitor in Venice.”² Smith’s collection of Canalettos would comprise the following: 49 paintings, 143 drawings, and 46 etchings. These went to George III and thence into the Royal Collection and these are the most significant holdings of Canaletto today.³ The banker’s first Canalettos were six views of San Marco, “impressionistic” in style, which some would say were his finest works rather than the later paintings for which he is better known. In fact as Haskell observed, critics and connoisseurs in England were surprised in the stylistic difference between the pictures Canaletto painted in Venice (which they deemed better) and those figurative paintings of English locations executed in a dry manner.⁴ With the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1741 making travel difficult, demand for Canaletto’s art fell, though the English could not complain they didn’t have enough of his art on their walls! Canaletto also had to contend with rivals like Marieschi and Guardi who also specialised in Venetian vedute. Interestingly, though Guardi’s atmospheric, sketchy style might have met with the approval of these English critics envious of Canaletto’s early phase, in their eyes Guardi failed to measure up against the veteran view painter despite his “romanticism.” For these connoisseurs, Guardi lacked the accuracy of Canaletto which helped to perpetuate a stereotypical view of the latter only to be modified near the end of the 19th century.⁵

1See J. G. Links: “Canaletto: A Biographical Sketch”, MMA, 3-15.

2Links, Canaletto, 6.

3See the exhibition catalogue for the Canaletto exhibition, (MMA, New York, 1989), Katharine Baetjer and J. G. Links and essays by Francis Haskell and Michael Levey and others. See also the earlier catalogue of the exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery: Canaletto, Paintings and Drawings, 1980-81.

4Haskell, “The Taste for Canaletto” in MMA,. In Haskell’s words: “[the difference] from the bold, fresh, dramatic touch of his earlier works to his later more mannered, dry, calligraphic bland manner..”

5 Haskell: “..an awareness of Guardi served primarily to reinforce the stereotype of Canaletto as an absolutely faithful delineator of his native city.” Revaluations of Canaletto as a painter of other than purely topographical views in favour seem to begin with Henry James in 1892, as noted by Haskell. [Henry] James said that he who emerged from the railway station “seemed to have a Canaletto before him.”