Lot 14

Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere (1868-1940), Warwick House, St. James's, London
Christie's, London, 19 December 1941, lots 66 and 72
Danton Gueralt, acquired from the above
The Property of a Trust
Christie's, London, Important Old Master Pictures Evening Sale, 7 December 2006, lot 69
where purchased by Robert Compton Jones (accompanied by a copy of the original purchase receipt and the auction catalogue)

Fiocco, G., Francesco Guardi, Florence, 1923, p. 74, nos. 106 and 107, pl. XCII and XCIV
Morassi, A., Guardi, Venice, 1973, I, pp. 376, 396, no. 458, p. 399 and p. 418, no. 576; II, fig. 547

RELATED WORKS:
Francesco Guardi, View on the Cannaregio Canal, Venice, c. 1750-80, oil on canvas, 50 x 76.8 cm, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, (Inv. 1939.1.113).

Francesco Guardi, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; verso: Flagstaff with a Pennant, c. 1765-1775, ink, wash and chalk on paper, 14.4 x 31.2 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Charles A. Loeser (1932.323).

Francesco Guardi, San Giorgio Maggiore seen from the Giudecca, oil on canvas, 48 x 66.5 cm, Fondazione Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, (inv. 2389).

Francesco Guardi, Veduta prospettica della chiesa di San Giorgio a Venezia, oil on canvas, 42 x 67 cm, Galleria Sabauda, (inv. 726) Musei Reali di Torino, Turin.

LOT ESSAY:
Francesco Guardi came from a family of painters and worked in a variety of genres before switching to painting views of Venice in his late forties in the late 1750s, often for English patrons, following the example of Antonio Canaletto. Whereas Canaletto produced strongly linear designs in clear bright colours, Guardi developed a more painterly style that emphasised the act of painting over topographical description. Flicks of white highlighting over subtle blues and greys of water and moody skies evoke the shimmering quality of the light of the watery city: 'he set the city floating, frail yet with bubble-like buoyancy, between great expanses of water and watery sky' (Michael Levey).(1) Guardi's interest in fluctuating effects of light at different times of day influenced subsequent painters, like J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet.

These qualities were particularly admired in the early twentieth century, when collectors like Calouste Gulbenkian, founder of the Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon, and the British newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere competed for his works.(2) This pair, from a set of four,(3) was acquired by Lord Rothermere whose Guardis, according to the catalogue of his collection made in 1932, were 'selected with an eye for precious pigmental quality and with a determination to admit nothing that falls short of Guardi's highest standard of perfection'.(4)

The view of San Giorgio Maggiore seen across the Bacino di San Marco was popular with view painters. Guardi shows it without its campanile (bell-tower) which had collapsed in 1774. This painting is closely related to one in the Fondazione Custodia collection,(5) and both seem to be based on a drawing in the Fogg Museum, which shows a bragozzo, the lagoon fishing boat with two masts and a distinctive high rudder, with its rear sail partially unfurled.6 In the paintings Guardi has added variant depictions of gondolas at the right and, in the Fondazione Custodia version, an extended view of boats on the lagoon at left. A variant of our painting, with a different repertory of boats and gondolas, is in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.(7)

The view of the Cannaregio is a more infrequent subject, pioneered in 1703 in an etching by Luca Carlevarijs and painted by Canaletto.(8) Guardi, like Carlevarijs shows not only the Ponte dei Tre Archi, but also the Palazzo Surian-Bellotto, seen almost frontally. The Palazzo Surian was the seat of the French embassy, with the arms of the ambassador in an elaborate gilt frame on the balcony. A related composition by his workshop, but without the Palazzo Surian, is in Washington. (9) Another composition in the Frick Art Reference Library shows a more extensive view with the Palazzo Surian in the centre and other buildings at the right. It was supplied to the English Resident in Venice, Sir John Strange, and must therefore date from after 1771 when Strange settled in Venice, as the Christie's, 2006 catalogue points out.(10)

David R. Marshall

(1) Michael Levey, Painting in Eighteenth-century Venice, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, p. 127.
(2) Splendour in Venice. From Canaletto to Guardi, exh. Cat., 25 October - 13 January 2025, Lisbon, Gulbenkian Museum, 2024.
(3) These pictures formed part of asset of four when they were published by Fiocco in 1923. The others are Piazza San Marco towards San Geminianon (47 x 67 cm., Milan, A. Crespi collection, Morassi, 1984, vol. 1, cat. 347, vol. 2, fig. 373), and Santa Maria della Salute and the Ponte della Dogana
(47 x 67 cm., Milan, A. Crespi collection, Morassi, 1984, vol. 1, p. 399, cat. 472, vol. 2, fig. 476). Morassi seems to have been aware that our two works remained together, giving the location of the San Giorgio Maggiore as 'London, art market', and the Ponte dei Tre Archi as 'whereabouts unknown'. He dates the the Piazza San Marco and Ponte dei Tre Archi to 1760-1770'; and call the Santa Maria della Salute a work of Guardi's middle period ('opera del period medio').
(4) Paul G. Konody and Tancred Borenius, (eds), Works of Art in the Collection of Viscount Rothermere, privately printed, 1932.
(5) Francesco Guardi, San Giorgio Maggiore seen from the Giudecca, (Morassi 437), 48 x 66.5 cm. Paris, Fondazione Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, inv. 2389. Un Univers intime. Paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection, exhibition, 2012, cat. 64. The illustrations in Morassi are transposed: fig. 460 is the Galleria Sabauda painting (cat. 436); fig. 461 is the Fondazione Custodia painting (cat. 437).. See also vol. 1, p. 242.
(6) Francesco Guardi, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; verso: Flagstaff with a Pennant, c. 1765-1775. Brown ink and brown wash over black chalk on white antique laid paper; verso: brown ink, brown wash and black chalk, 14.4 x 31.2 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Charles A. Loeser 1932.323; Morassi, Guardi: tutti i disegni di Antonio, Francesco e Giacomo Guardi, Alfieri, Venice: 1975, no. 351, fig. 352.
(7) Francesco Guardi, Veduta prospettica della chiesa di San Giorgio a Venezia, Morassi 436, 42 x 67 cm, Galleria Sabauda, inv. 726. Musei Reali di Torino, Turin.
(8) Luca Carlevarijs, Palazzo Surian in Canal Regio. Architettura di Gioseppe Sardi, etching, 1703.
(9) Francesco Guardi, View on the Cannaregio Canal, Venice, c. 17750-80, 50 x 76.8 cm, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection,. Inv. 1939.1.113 (224). Diane de Grazia and Eric Harberson, Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Washington, National Gallery of Art/Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 121-25.)
(10) Morassi, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 417-18, cat. 575, vol. 2, fig. 546. See https://digitalcollections.frick.org.