The Façade of La Salute, Venice

John Singer Sargent formed an abiding love for and fascination with Venice's unique patina that informed his depictions of the mysterious floating city for over thirty years. Sargent first encountered Venice on a trip with his family in 1870 at the age of fourteen and paid nearly annual visits to the city from 1898 to 1913. While some of Sargent’s earliest imagery focused on inhabitants, his mature Venetian subjects demonstrated his considerable interest in the architecture of the city. He was particularly struck by the aging Renaissance and Baroque façades and peculiar ambiance that defined the city in the nineteenth century, which he transformed into some of his most successful images. The Façade of La Salute is a dynamic example of Sargent’s mature Venetian aesthetic, while serving as a window into the life and travels of one of the most celebrated American artists at the turn of the twentieth century.
The Façade of La Salute depicts a view looking southwest toward the Roman Catholic church Santa Maria della Salute, also known as the Salute. To the right of the church is what was formerly the abbey church of San Gregario, now a private residence. The present work and Santa Maria della Salute (Brooklyn Museum, New York) are the only watercolors in Sargent’s oeuvre depicting boats by the steps of the Salute. In order to view Venice from this unique vantage point, Sargent set out in a gondola to approach the city from the water, capturing the vivid imagery in dazzling watercolor tones. Watercolors produced in this manner, including The Façade of La Salute, have the effect of a snapshot, echoing contemporary photography with their cropped, close-up views, tilted perspective and fluctuating angles.
Sargent exhibited the present work at the 1904 Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, London. A contemporary critic from the Westminster Gazette praised “the huddle of boats and gondolas at the steps of the Salute,” while another from the Pall Mall Gazette opined, “The white of the fisherman’s shirt is thickly loaded, for the large daylight can bear the comparative dimness of the opaque color.” Another from the Morning Post commented, “Not less vivacious in treatment is a view of ‘The Façade of the Salute’, which, vigorously direct in its freedom of workmanship, possesses the unity of tints in a high key conductive to complete suggestion of open air” (quoted in R. Ormond and E. Kilmurray, John Singer Sargent: Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913, Complete Paintings, New Haven, 2009, vol. VI, p. 77, 77n2).
The present work was illustrated as a frontispiece in Neville Wilkinson’s 1923 story Yvette in Venice and Titania’s Palace. A friend of Wilkinson, Sargent painted the author in watercolor on the bridge at Wilton House near Salisbury, Wiltshire. The present work was originally owned by Sargent’s single greatest patron, the dealer Asher Wertheimer (1844-1918). Wertheimer and his family owned approximately 8 Venetian watercolors, through gifts and acquisitions directly from the artist. He commissioned a dozen single and group portraits directly from Sargent, ten of which are now in the Tate, London.