Lot Essay
No other version of this composition is known. Peter Baker, the first recorded owner of the present painting, probably acquired it shortly after 1781, when he became the Member of Parliament for Arundel, Wootton Bassett and Corfe Castle, married, and acquired the estate of Ranston in Dorset. In the same year he commissioned the full-length portrait of his wife by Thomas Gainsborough now in the Frick Collection (E. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, p. 53, no. 36, pl. 236; The Frick Collection. An Illustrated Catalogue, 1968, I, Paintings, pp. 51-3, illustrated). Other paintings from Peter Baker's collection sold by Major and Mrs Gibson Fleming in 1960 included works by Aelbert Cuyp, George Morland, Frans Snyders, Gillis van Tilborch, Adriaen van der Velde, Joseph Vernet and Francis Wheatley. They also included another painting by Canaletto, The Churches of the Redentore and S. Giacomo, Venice, from the Canale di Giudecca last sold at Christie's, London, April 11, 1986, lot 54, and now in a private collection, London (Constable, op. cit., I, pl. 203, and II, p. 347, no. 318*). This is of identical size and similar date to the present painting but can never have been intended as a pendant since it differs considerably in scale and horizon level, and the vanishing point is near the left edge