Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Canaletto

Claudio Argentieri (L.486b);

Pier Giulio Breschi (L.2079b);

sale, London, Sotheby's, 18 November 1982, lot 70;

sale, London, Sotheby's, 4 July 1988, lot 104;

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 27 January 2010, lot 89,

where acquired by the present owner

W.G. Constable, revised by J.G. Links, Canaletto, Oxford 1989, vol. II, p. 621, under no. 852, reproduced vol. I, pl. 223

Drawings of boats by Canaletto are very rare. One other, showing an anchored Venetian sloop, was formerly in the collection of Sir Bruce Ingram, and is extremely similar in handling to the present work.¹  Also similar in conception, though apparently rather dryer in technique, is a Study of a War Galley, in Berlin, which Constable and Links catalogued as Canaletto with some reservations.²

The present drawing is, however, the only one of the three to include a figure, and the characteristic handling of this feature, together with the treatment of light on the water and of details such as the weeds hanging from the mooring ropes, confirm the traditional attribution to Canaletto. Particularly comparable in these respects are, for example, the View of Venice from the Punta della Mota, in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and the London: the Thames, looking towards Westminster from near York Watergate, at Yale.³   

A boat similar to the one seen here appears in Canaletto's painting of The Bacino di San Marco: looking East, in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.⁴

^1.Sold, London, Sotheby's, 11 December 1974, lot 59; see A. Bettagno, et al., Canaletto, exhib. cat., Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 1982, cat. 23

^2.Constable/Links, op. cit., cat. 852, reproduced pl. 161

^3.Constable/Links, op. cit., cats 522 and 747

^4.See Canaletto, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989, cat. 51