St Mark's and the Ducal Palace from San Giorgio; and San Giorgio from the Ducal Palace, Venice

The majority of Birket Foster's watercolours of Venice were painted for his largest commission, received in the early 1870s from the Lincolnshire corn merchant Charles Seely. Seely had seen a watercolour of Venice at Agnew's and was so taken with it that he paid Birket Foster the princely sum of 5,000 to paint 50 views of the city.

Birket Foster first visited Venice in 1868, in the company of his wife, his cousin Mrs Elizabeth Foster Brown, his cousin's daughter Elizabeth, and the artist W.Q. Orchardson. He hired a gondola, and the sketching party explored the smaller canals for studies of the local life as well as the more usual tourist sites. After his initial visit Birket Foster returned to Venice almost every year until 1877 to work on the watercolours for the Seely commission.