.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This canvas depends ultimately on Canaletto's view of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, originally owned by Consul Smith and now in the Royal Collection (Constable, no. 308), Visentini's engraving of which was published in 1742. As Constable observed, this picture differs from the prototype in being taken from the further side of the Rio dei Mendicanti and introducing a quay, which did not in fact exist. In the 1885 sale, the picture, misidentified as of San Giorgio, was sold with two others of the same unusual format, St. Mark's Quay and the Doge's Palace.
The pictures were presumably acquired by Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough (1790-1871), the Tory politician and Governor-General of India in 1841-44, whose second wife Jane Digby was one of the more flamboyant women of her age, living in Damascus after her divorce. Its next owner, Henry G. Bohn, was an influential publisher. Francis Capel-Cure, who subsequently obtained the picture, had with Badger Hall, inherited what remained of the major picture collection formed in Venice by Edward Cheyney.
The pictures were presumably acquired by Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough (1790-1871), the Tory politician and Governor-General of India in 1841-44, whose second wife Jane Digby was one of the more flamboyant women of her age, living in Damascus after her divorce. Its next owner, Henry G. Bohn, was an influential publisher. Francis Capel-Cure, who subsequently obtained the picture, had with Badger Hall, inherited what remained of the major picture collection formed in Venice by Edward Cheyney.