MURA · THE COLLECTION · J. M. W. TURNER

Venice, the Mouth of the Grand Canal

Venice, The Mouth of the Grand Canal is a small watercolour by J. M. W. Turner, 22.2 by 31.8 centimetres, looking across the water to the Customs House and San Giorgio Maggiore. It belongs to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Paul Mellon Collection, accession number B1977.14.4652. Yale dates it 1832; the Commons record says about 1840.

J. M. W. Turner · c. 1840 · Watercolour on paper · Romanticism · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

Venice appears through warm, pale light, its buildings and boats barely separated from their reflections. Yale's record describes the sheet: on the left, strokes of red and brown pen over almost bare white paper stand for sunlight reflected off the palaces of the Grand Canal, while on the right cool greens and blues wash in the Customs House, the dome and the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore. The museum notes that "though rapidly executed, the resulting image convincingly evokes the city's evanescent luminosity".

How it was painted

Turner, born in London in 1775, went to Venice three times: on his first long Italian journey in 1819, again in 1833, travelling by way of the Danube and the Rhine, and in 1840. He worked in watercolour throughout his career, from sketches and at times on the spot. This sheet is a watercolour on cream wove paper with a slight texture, and the museum classes it among drawings and watercolours; it is not an oil painting, whatever its reproduction may suggest on a screen.

Where it went

The watercolour was acquired by the American collector Paul Mellon before 1977 and came to the Yale Center for British Art as part of the Paul Mellon Collection. It has been lent to Turner and Venice at Tate Britain in 2003 to 2004 and the Kimbell Art Museum in 2004, to the Louvre's Turner exhibition of 1983 to 1984, and most recently shown at Yale in J.M.W. Turner: Romance and Reality in 2025. At the time of writing it is not on view. The reproduction is the Google Art Project file on Wikimedia Commons, which records the Yale accession.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to the Coast & Countryside collection with a luminous mood: almost nothing but light on paper.