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Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (Canal)
(Oct. 1697 Venice - Apr.10, 1768 Venice) Venetian oil painting artist biography.
Giovanni Antonio Canaletto was the most famous view-painter of the 18th century. He began work painting theatrical scenery, but he turned to topography during a visit to Rome in 1720. By 1723 he was painting dramatic oil painting views of Venice, marked by strong contrasts of light and shade and free handling, this phase of his work culminating in the splendid Stone Mason's Yard (1730, National Gallery, London). Meanwhile, partly under the influence of Luca Carlevaris, and largely in rivalry with him. Canaletto will go far beyond anything achieved in this relatively new genre by its only earlier Venetian exponent of significance, now nearing the end of his career. Giovanni Antonio Canaletto began to turn out views which were more topographically accurate, set in a higher key and with smoother, more precise handling, characteristics that mark most of his later work. At the same time he began painting in oil the ceremonial and festival subjects which ultimately formed an important part of his artwork.
Contemporaries had already recognized Canaletto’s superiority by 1725, when he, rather than Carlevarijs, secured a commission to execute four Venetian views which are the artist’s earliest documented works. After this date most of Canaletto’s clients were foreigners, above all Englishmen and he was called upon to meet an increasing demand for Grand Tour souvenirs. To this end he modified his style, suppressing atmospheric effects in favor of consistent warm sunshine and producing the tranquil vision of Venice and the everyday life of its inhabitants. By the mid-1730s, Canaletto’s agent and chief promoter Joseph Smith, who was to be appointed British Consul in 1744, was procuring for the artist commissions for large series of oil canvases. It may be assumed that he was being assisted by a well organized studio, he often used the camera obscura as an aid to composition. The only known member of this art studio is Canaletto’s remarkably precocious nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, who emerges as an individual artistic personality in the late 1730s, a moment when Canaletto’s palette turns to the colder tones which were to characterize the younger painter’s work throughout his career. The 1740s saw a reduction in the number of commissions Canaletto received, the War of the Austrian Succession curtailing the flow of foreign visitors to Venice, while his employment of studio assistants is evident in a hardening of style and in variations of quality so much so that rumors were started, probably by rivals, that he was not in fact the famous Canaletto but an impostor. Always ready to face new challenges, he moved to his client base, spending a decade in England from 1746.
The works of his English period, fresh, vivid, lighter in tone and often on a gray rather than a russet ground, include by far the finest portraits of eighteenth-century London, while it is characteristic of the artist's working methods that he continued to produce views of Italy based on drawings and prints. Canaletto was back in Venice in 1755 for the last dozen years of his life, his works of this period being in a distinct late style, dark in tone and mannered. Although the execution of many paintings is disappointing, he never lost his powers of invention or his ability to surprise. Canaletto's admission to the Accademia Veneziana di Pittura e Scultura in 1763 gave him belated official recognition. Legends of his having amassed a fortune in Venice were disproved by the official inventory of his estate on his death. Before this, Joseph Smith had sold the major part of his paintings to King George III, thus bringing into the royal collection an unrivalled group of Canaletto's oil paintings. But on his death all he had to show for his achievements was a modest piece of property and twenty-eight unsold oil paintings. Canaletto was highly influential in Italy and elsewhere. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto took his style to central Europe and his followers in England included William Marlow and Samuel Scott.
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San Cristoforo, San Michele Murano
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The Arsenal: the Water Entrance
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Stone Mason's Yard
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