When Canaletto Came to England . . .
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When it came to the depiction of Venice — an activity that consumed a surprising amount of time and talent back in the 18th century — Antonio Canaletto reigned paramount. He knew every angle and sight line of the Most Serene Republic, and he understood how best to elicit the obvious and less obvious beauties of the city of his birth.
But what happened when he was extracted from his native context and required to paint an entirely different environment? That is the subject of “Canaletto in England” (Yale University Press, 220 pages, $65), a charming book by Charles Beddington that accompanies a transcendent exhibition on the same theme that started in Yale’s Center for British Art and has moved to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London (through April 15).
After the War of the Austrian Succession cut off much of his patronage, Canaletto spent nearly nine years in England, between 1746 and 1755, during which time he returned only once to the continent. His adjustment to this new environment was not as simple as one might think from the loveliness of the resulting paintings and drawings. Quite aside from having to learn all the visual angles of his new home — mainly London and stately homes like Syon House and Warwick Castle — Canaletto contrived images that were fundamentally different from his Venetian scenes and that answered to fundamentally different demands from his patrons.
In Venice, Canaletto had depicted urban density, as well as thousands of brilliantly configured urbanites pounding the pavement. In his view of Badminton House, by contrast, he not only has to flatter his house-proud patron but fundamentally to reconceive how he sees the world. Now the stately home is seen in isolation, and a strange color known as green — almost unheard of in Venice — dominates the canvas. Also, the relative architectural dullness of the building in question, and the demands of clarity, hamper Canaletto’s ability to find the best angles.
This was the case with his views of Westminister Bridge. Canaletto’s depictions are delightful, but one suspects that, left to his own devices, he would have conceived the scene more dramatically than in “Westminster Bridge from the North with the Lord Mayor’s Procession.” Here the bridge extends tediously and interminably across the waters of the turquoise Thames.
In its discussion of such works, as well as Canaletto’s interiors of Westminster Abbey, capriccios and Venetian scenes, this book contains essays by Brian Allen and Francis Russell as well as Mr. Beddington. In a refreshing way, they have produced one of the most conservative specimens of art historical writing in years. Invoking the tradition of the Courtauld Institute, they are less interested in symbolism, let alone ideology, than in connoisseurship and questions of patronage and provenance.
As such, they do not see it as their job to consider the more poetic aspects of their subject. Among great painters, no one presents us with a greater mystery than Canaletto. Superficially, his art appears as unmysterious as could be: It usually begins and ends with punctilious rendering of architectural data, flooded with the light of the noonday sun, and, it would seem, of the enlightened intellect.
But the more you reflect on the man, the more wondrous his achievement becomes. Cityscapes were a charming corner of old master painting for more than a hundred years, and many achieved distinction in the genre. But in a medium that accommodates a high degree of burnished mediocrity, Canaletto bursts through to greatness. That is the first mystery.
The second is the man himself. Of all great artists, with the possible exception of Vermeer, he is the most unknowable. This is not for want of documentation. Rather it is that his work tells us nothing about him, his moods or his private convictions. Even in the sparse remains of Duccio, we sense the stirrings of piety and can infer an entire character, an entire life, from that fact. Meanwhile, artists as different as Botticelli and Caravaggio stand before us as fully fleshed-out personalities. But of Canaletto we know almost nothing worth knowing. From the documents and correspondence discussed in Mr. Beddington’s book, he comes across as efficiently businesslike and professional. Beyond that, he paints in silence, and his paint, though resplendent, is silent to the point of sullenness.
