Fascination for canal city

By T.J. McNAMARA in Europe

The English poet Robert Browning lived and died in Venice and wrote one of his loveliest poems, A Toccata of Galuppi's, about his vision of the city. "What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?" he asked in his poem.

English-speaking people have always been fascinated by Venice. As with Florence and Rome there is an English version of the Italian name, which indicates a long relationship with both the reality and the legend of the place.

The vision of its colour, light and splendour owes much to J.M.W. Turner who has a special place in British hearts as perhaps their greatest painter. The long queues at the exhibition Turner and Venice at the Tate Britain are a tribute to both.

The dramatic richness of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Othello may have begun the fascination with it. Turner put characters from the plays in some of his paintings of Venice.

Then there was the popularity of the poems of Lord Byron who lived and loved in Venice and wrote about it very wittily in his poem Beppo as well as in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.

Turner first visited Venice in 1819, the same year as Byron's Ode on Venice was published. He visited again in 1833 and 1840. He built a close association with the city though he spent just on four weeks there overall.

Turner had always been a great painter of the sea and the effects of light on water, and Venice provided both as well as architecturally interesting buildings. He did hundreds of sketches, some of which he worked up into paintings to be shown at the Academy and sold to his wealthy patrons.

By the time Turner reached Venice he was a completely mature master obedient only to his own artistic impulses. In earlier years he had been always conscious of challenging and surpassing other artists.

By his last visit he cared nothing for others and his techniques had become completely revolutionary and entirely his own.

The huge exhibition at the Tate Britain quite outweighs the Turner Prize Show named after him. It shows in enormous detail the intensity of Turner's preoccupation with the canal city and the wonderful essays in colour it inspired.

He did a long series of more than 20 oil paintings that were shown in his lifetime. Only after his death was access possible to the hundreds of pages in 10 sketchbooks where he set down his immediate response to the city's waterways and landmarks.

The exhibition is divided into a dozen parts and spread over six large galleries. Incorporated in it are works by a number of the painter's contemporaries who were also fascinated by the city as well as paintings by Canaletto, the native painter of the city. There is also a weighty, scholarly catalogue enlivened by an essay by Jan Morris who knows the city in all its moods.

An interesting part of the exhibition and catalogue deals with the influence of the great Venetian painters of the Renaissance, Titian and Tintoretto, on Turner's work.

Most of the painters contemporary with Turner are pre-occupied with architectural detail, the splendour of the palaces and St Marks Cathedral.

He could do all that when needed but he could also do so much more. In sketch after sketch he captures the luminous sky, the light on the water, the buildings rising from it with deftly handled watercolour so spontaneous it seems the work of a moment but embodies the experience of a lifetime.

The crowd has its disadvantage. It is impossible to stand well back from the big paintings so they make their effect, as they were meant to, at a distance. Yet close-up the sheer audacity of the handling is amazing.

These big paintings are mostly famous. Many of the sketches have never been exhibited before and are unlikely to be on show again in the near future if only because their colour is vulnerable to the light.

Among the very detailed works are a number of studies of the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal. This was a focus for Turner in a number of works and there is a splendid example on loan from a museum in Indianapolis which shows the bridge and the canal crowded with boats.

Turner had the immense advantage in his time because the gondolas were everyday working boats and not just a tourist attraction. And sailing boats provided both colour and ghost-like wings over the sea when he turned his attention to the lagoon between the islands.

The Doge's palace and the bell-tower on St Marks Square provide wonderful compositional opportunities and, with the Customs House, appear again and again. St Marks itself, which is the outstanding attraction for the present-day visitor, features much less often.

This may be because it is set back from the sea. The sea, reflections, sunset and sunrise over water had a hold on Turner that was nothing short of an obsession. One watercolour called Venice at Sunrise from the Hotel Europa is no more than splashes of red and yellow and a wash of pale purple and the vertical of the bell-tower.

Turner was staying at the Hotel Europa and must have risen early and gone to the roof to catch the sunrise. This tiny work exactly captures the whole feel of Venice in the early morning and fixes it for ever.

This is where the catalogue is very good. No reproduction does more than give a hint of the unique nature of Turner's oil paintings and the handling and texture but the catalogue, with all the resources of modern colour printing, reproduces that water-colour at almost the size of the original. It makes a fine monument to an important part of Turner's colossal achievement.

One of Turner's best-known paintings from the Tate's own collection is The Sun of Venice going to Sea. It shows a fishing boat, colourful sail set, leaving the city across the lagoon. Turner's characteristic pessimism makes it look like Fate setting sail to an unknown future. Whatever happens to Venice, even if it sinks, as predicted, into the sea, some part of it will always survive in the work of Turner, Bonnington, Monet, Canaletto and all the innumerable other artists who have been inspired by its unique beauty.