Venice from the Lido to Giudecca

‘The virtue of Inchbold’s landscape is the directness of his sensory response to the particularity of place, expressed in painterly terms that evolve in the course of his career from painstaking exactitude to near abstraction’ (C. Newall, John William Inchbold: Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Artist, Leeds, 1993, p. 11).
This extraordinary landscape demonstrates how Inchbold reconciled these seemingly opposing tendencies. Taken from or immediately adjacent to the island of San Lazzaro near the Lido, the topography of the city is recorded in precise detail. To the left lies the southern shore of the Giudecca with the dome of the Redentore and the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore. Then there follows the campanile of St Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace. Continuing to the right are the Giardini, and the dome of San Pietro in Castello. The thin strip of land is slightly bowed to give emphasis to the vast expanse of sea and sky, but the picture’s poetic mood never obscures topographical accuracy. The subject of the picture becomes not the vedute, which becomes almost an incidental detail, but the essence of the day, in all its heat and languor and saturated blueness. The canvas is far from impressionistic, and yet, owing to the highly original viewpoint, the experience of a day on the lagoon in high summer is immediately understood. This is achieved not through the evocation of feeling, but through the careful recording of fact stated with the utmost simplicity.
Inchbold lived in Venice for reasons of economy between 1862 and 1864. The painting is dated 1866, and is therefore presumably the date it was completed. It was stored in Rossetti’s house in Cheyne Walk before being shown at a private exhibition of Inchbold’s landscapes in Cavendish Square, from where it was presumably sold, in 1869. With conventional landscapists such as Thomas Creswick and F.R. Lee steering the opinion of the Royal Academy, it was probably deemed too avant-garde for exhibition there. It can now be appreciated as something of a masterpiece.