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Sun pours across a landscape with trees and plants growing around and on an arched stone ruin, a bridge and river, and, in the distance, buildings along a flat-topped hill carpeted with grass in this vertical painting. Tiny in scale in the landscape, about two dozen men, women, and children wear dresses and clothing in shades of tan, brown, turquoise, cream white, black, red, and mustard yellow. Close to us, the arched ruins, possibly of an aqueduct, are nearly hidden by tall trees, bushes, and growth hanging from its deck. The trees growing up in front of the ruins nearly span the height of the painting and take up most of the left half of the composition. A river winds from the lower right corner into the distance to our right, passing under a bridge in the middle distance on the right edge of the painting. The shallowly arched bridge crosses the river in front of a long block of a building with rows of windows and arched arcades. The flat-topped hill rises in the center distance. There, a freestanding arch could be another ruin. Buildings with brown walls and terracotta-red roofs, along with the pointed spire of a church, are contained within a town wall a little farther down the hill from the arch. More churches with spires are nestled into the valley to our left of the hill, extending into the distance. The people are scattered through the landscape, and they all have pale skin. Closest to us, a man and woman stand near a black and white dog that barks at a pair of swans in the river, at the bottom center of the composition. A woman nearby bends over a basket on the ground, and a man with a long staff, tucked into the vegetation near the aqueduct, looks on. More people sit, stand, or play by the riverbank closer to the bridge or look at the water from the bridge itself. On the river is an elaborately decorated, long, narrow boat like a gondola. One person in the boat props open a yellow and white parasol; another, who rows the boat, wears a blue and yellow outfit with a cap like an overturned flower blossom. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and the sky above is brilliant topaz blue.

Canaletto

English Landscape Capriccio with a Palace, c. 1754

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 31

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 134 x 108.8 cm (52 3/4 x 42 13/16 in.)

framed: 151.8 x 126.4 x 6.4 cm (59 3/4 x 49 3/4 x 2 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Paul Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1964.2.2

Artists / Makers

Canaletto (artist) Venetian, 1697 - 1768

Image Use

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Provenance

Probably commissioned by Thomas, 5th baron King [1712-1779], London and Ockham Park, Surrey;[1] by descent at Ockham Park to Peter Malcolm, 4th earl of Lovelace [1905-1964]; (his sale, Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1937, no. 133); purchased by (M. Knoedler & Co., London);[2] purchased 1938 by Philip Hill; Mrs. Philip Hill [later Mrs. Warwick Bryant] until 1959.[3] (Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York); purchased December 1960 by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia;[4] gift 1964 to NGA.

[1] Francis Russell, "A Suffusion of Light", Country Life 187 (14 October 1993): 64, has corrected the traditional provenance of the Lovelace capriccios: "That the most prominently placed of the series-the overmantel-which alone is signed and dated 1754, is dominated by a reminiscence of the chapel at Eton leaves little doubt that the patron was neither the 3rd Lord King, nor his successor the 4th Lord, but their brother Thomas, later the 5th Lord King (1712-1779). He married an heiress and their son was sent to Eton. The original setting of the canvases was thus presumably in their London house, rather than at the family seat at Ockham . . . ." W.G. Constable, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768 (2nd edition revised by J. G. Links, reissued with supplement and additional plates, 2 vols., Oxford, 1989: 1:146-147), reported the family tradition that the paintings were acquired with money brought into the family through the marriage in 1734 of Catherine Troye of Brabant to the 5th baron King, great-grandfather of the 8th baron King, 1st earl of Lovelace. The paintings are said to have been commissioned by the 5th baron and his wife, but since one is dated 1754, they must have been bought by either Peter, 3d baron King, who died in that year, or his brother, William, 4th baron King, who lived until 1767. See also Hilda F. Finberg, "The Lovelace Canalettos", The Burlington Magazine 72 (February 1938): 69, n. 1.

[2] Art Prices Current, n.s. 16 (1936-1937): 192, no. 6548.

[3] Canaletto in England, Exh. cat., Guildhall, London 1959, no. 6.

[4] Typed notations from Mellon records by David M. Robb, 14 July 1964, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Hill, Philip
Hill, Philip, Mrs.
King, 4th earl of Lovelace, Peter Malcolm
King, 5th baron King, Thomas
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon, Paul
Sotheby's
Stiebel, Ltd.

Exhibition History

1959: Canaletto in England, Guildhall, London, 1959, no. 4.

1964: Extended loan for use by Ambassador David K.E. Bruce, U.S. Embassy residence, London, England, 1964-1969 (on loan to Embassy when given to NGA; lent prior to 1964 by Paul Mellon).

1969: Extended loan to the Ambassador, U.S. Embassy residence, Brussels, Belgium, 1969-1972.

1972: Extended loan to the Ambassador, U.S. Embassy residence, Rome, Italy, 1972-1977.

1989: Canaletto, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989-1990, no. 75.

1993: Canaletto & England, Birmingham Gas Hall Exhibition Gallery, England, 1993-1994, no. 37, repro., as Capriccio: river landscape with a ruin and reminiscences of England.

1994: The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museo del Settecento Veneziano - Ca'Rezzonico, Venice, 1994-1995, not in cat. (shown only in Washington in 1995).

2006: Canaletto in England: A Venetian Artist Abroad, 1746-1755, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 2006 -2007, no. 70, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a plain-weave, medium-weight fabric. The thread count differs slightly from the support of the pendant (1964.2.1) and confirms that different rolls of fabric were used for each. A thin white ground was employed and is visible at the edges of the paint surface. The paint was applied wet-over-dry with only a few small passages painted wet-into-wet. The composition was built up from the middle ground, with each compositional detail completed before the addition of subsequent pictorial elements above; completed architecture or landscape can often be detected under the figures or other foreground details. The figures were sketched quickly with a dark wash that was allowed to dry before color was added over it using a thicker, opaque paint, with a lighter hue for the highlighted areas and a darker tone of the same color for the shadows. The highlights were applied more thickly. Some red pigment was added to create a warmer tonality in the sky. X-radiographs reveal no compositional changes.

The tacking margins have been removed, but cusping along the vertical edges suggests that the painting retains its original dimensions. There are small losses in the lower-right corner. Slight abrasion is evident in the thinly painted areas of the distant landscape. The varnish is slightly yellowed. The painting, which was lined at an unknown date, has not been treated since acquisition.

Bibliography

1938: Finberg, Hilda F. "The Lovelace Canalettos." The Burlington Magazine 72 (February 1938): 69-70, pl. II [A].

1962: Constable, William George. Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768. 2 vols. Oxford, 1962: 1:pl. 87; 2:413, no. 473.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 22, as Landscape Capriccio with Palace.

1967: Eeles, Adrian. Canaletto. London, 1967: 37, color pl. 44.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 14, repro., as Landscape Capriccio with Palace.

1968: Puppi, Lionello. The Complete Paintings of Canaletto. Milan, 1968: 117, repro., no. 307.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 43.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 52, repro., as Landscape Capriccio with Palace.

1976: Constable and Links 1976, 1: pl. 87; 2: 445, no. 473.

1977: Links, J. G. Canaletto and His Patrons. London, 1977: 76-77, pl. 113.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979:1I:105-106; 2:pl. 72, as Landscape Capriccio with Palace.

1982: Links, J. G. Canaletto. Oxford, 1982: 192, pl. 185.

1985: Corboz, André. Canaletto: Una Venezia immaginaria. Catalogue compiled by Anna Tortorelo. 2 vols. Milan, 1985: 2:704, repro., no. P 367.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 73, repro.

1989: Baetjer, Katharine, and J. G. Links. Canaletto. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1989: 256-259, no. 75.

1989: Constable, W. G. Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768. 2nd edition revised by J. G. Links, reissued with supplement and additional plates. 2 vols. Oxford, 1989: 1:pl. 87; 2:445, no. 473.

1993: Liversidge, Michael, and Jane Farrington. Canaletto & England. Exh. cat. Birmingham Gas Hall Exhibition Gallery, Birmingham, 1993: 26, 27, 99, color repro. 98.

1993: Russell, Francis. "A Suffusion of Light." Country Life 187 (14 October 1993): 64.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 35-39, color repro. 37.