The Doge's Palace and Campanile, Venice

Wendy Baron (loc. cit.) comments on the present work, when discussing the difficult of dating Sickert's early Venetian pictures: 'It is unsafe to classify the Venetian landscapes as earlier or later works by making a simple distinction between the sketchily executed paintings ... and the more exciting fullness and richness of tone found in other Venetian paintings. A picture of The Doge's Palace seen across the lagoon [the present work] is an effective demonstration of how such a classification could break down. The horizontally banded composition, the thin fluid paint laid smoothly over a fine canvas, the vague blurred definition, the colours employed (grey-green water, sandy buildings, pale blue and violet sky), all point to a vivid memory of Whistler's methods and would seem to indicate a date at the very beginning of Sickert's first visit to Venice [1895], even before he had developed the fine calligraphy with which he accented his thinly painted landscapes of this time. However, this painting is dated 1900 on the reverse'.