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Lot Essay
Sickert had first visited Venice in 1895, to return for the winter of 1900-1, for a visit or around eight months, punctuated by a short return to France in November or December 1900. Dr. Wendy Baron (op. cit., pp.61-63) considers that the paintings from the second visit to Venice mostly divide into two distinct stylistic groups: those is which the paint is applied lightly and loosely with a palette of bright colours; and those in which the paint is applied more heavily and with a drier consistency and with a palette of strong colours, notably dark green and purple. However, in a small group of paintings including the present work, which Dr. Baron dates to the summer of 1901, Sickert used both techniques, combining the heavier application of the second group with the light and bright palette of the first.
The pictures from the second visit to Venice differ from the first as Sickert developed from painting panoramic views, to studying smaller and more concentrated sections of the city's landmarks, resulting in works with an impressive and sculptural quality. As Dr. Baron comments 'he sought to render the richly complex massing of solid surfaces instead of giving a two-dimensional, calligraphically conceived map of their lines and planes. For instance, instead of giving the whole panorama of the faade of St. Mark's as in 1895-6 he chose to paint isolated fragments, the splendidly dramatic bronze horses beneath the central lunette flanked by intricate pinnacles, or the north-west corner of the faade [as in the present work]. In the same way, whereas in 1896 he had painted the Guardi-like view of Santa Maria della Salute as an incident in the mid-ground horizon seen across a deep stretch of the lagoon, in 1901 he came right up and under the church to paint it rising up out of the water like a massive piece of organic sculpture'.
The pictures from the second visit to Venice differ from the first as Sickert developed from painting panoramic views, to studying smaller and more concentrated sections of the city's landmarks, resulting in works with an impressive and sculptural quality. As Dr. Baron comments 'he sought to render the richly complex massing of solid surfaces instead of giving a two-dimensional, calligraphically conceived map of their lines and planes. For instance, instead of giving the whole panorama of the faade of St. Mark's as in 1895-6 he chose to paint isolated fragments, the splendidly dramatic bronze horses beneath the central lunette flanked by intricate pinnacles, or the north-west corner of the faade [as in the present work]. In the same way, whereas in 1896 he had painted the Guardi-like view of Santa Maria della Salute as an incident in the mid-ground horizon seen across a deep stretch of the lagoon, in 1901 he came right up and under the church to paint it rising up out of the water like a massive piece of organic sculpture'.