Coup de canon, Venise

Most famous for his views of Venice and Istanbul, Félix Ziem was a nomadic, unique and eccentric artist. His long, prolific career began in the 1840s when he fell in love with the landscape of the Mediterranean and, later, Venice. Ziem traveled extensively throughout his life and would come to attract a wide range important patrons who were entranced by the artist’s beautiful depictions of the many sights he saw while on his travels. Uninterested in the Realist movement that was the driving force in landscape art in the last decades of the 19th century, Ziem instead maintained his own unique style throughout his life. A brilliant colorist, Ziem painted with a vibrant palette and was particularly interested in understanding the effects of sunlight on landscape, which he rendered beautifully in his paintings.
The artist’s best known work was produced on his many trips to Venice, where Ziem travelled numerous times between 1842 and 1897, sometimes painting from a floating studio on a gondola. Anne Burdin-Hellebranth catalogues fifteen other paintings by Ziem depicting ships firing canons in the Venice harbor, all undated. Six of these have very similar compositions to the present work, including one in the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.

We are grateful to The Association Félix Ziem, represented by Mathias Ary Jan and Davis Pluskwa and Gérard Fabre, for confirming the authenticity of this work.