Venice from the Lagoon, by Wilfrid Williams Ball, RBA, RE (1853–1917). Etching on moderately thick, slightly textured, beige wove paper. Sheet (trimmed inside plate): 9 1/4 × 12 11/16 inches (23.5 × 32.2 cm) and Image: 5 11/16 × 9 3/4 inches (14.5 × 24.7 cm). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.14201. Identified as being in the public domain. Image download, text transcription and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
ORIGINAL ETCHING BY WILFRID BALL (from The Art Journal (1891)
VENICE has undergone such vicissitudes in Art as prove her the most infinitely various of cities. Canaletto found in her the pearly definiteness of detail, Guardi the profound harmonies of colour, Holland the generalising atmosphere which we know in the work of each. Mr. Van Haanen and Mr. Fildes see her peopled with ruddy-haired young workwomen. Mr. Howells is aware rather of the old women whispering their gelid prayers in the frosty churches. To Alfred de Musset she is "Venise la rouge," while the blue of her waters is almost the only colour conspicuous to the traveller who surprises her on a fresh day in autumn. Figure-painter and colourist and poet alike, however, fail to enjoy to the full the finesse of a black and white Venice, the sharpness and simplicity at once of the low-lying city seen against the sea-board skies by the low-seated artist. Venice, considered for her form and her lights and shadows merely — as the etcher considers her — gets a peculiar character from this lowness of horizon, and this invariable lifting-up of her "sky-line" against the sky. In all other cities some high buildings are now and then lowered by being seen from some hill or height; in a word, the relative loftiness is constantly shifted. But the familiar Venetian belfries, turrets, and towers, are always pricked into the blue or the cloud. For the same reason the artist, unless he should barbarously make his picture out of a high window, is compelled to a certain simplicity by the low standpoint that makes his horizon always low. He is compelled, too, to that most picturesque effectiveness of things coming and going, large in the foreground. There are no great distances in Venice or at sea, and all that passes looms conspicuous. Mr. Wilfrid Ball has made the happiest use of the shadow side of the dark Venetian sails. And to these happy accidents his beautiful work unites the delicate cloud-forms, of slower movement, and the motionless towers. His "Venice" is singularly successful in its arrangement of form, light, and local tone. [340]
A small selection of other views
- Venice - Maria della Salute by Joseph Mallord William Turner (exhibited 1844, an "atmospheric" Venice)
- The Grand Canal Venice by John Ruskin (a low-level pencil view, more strictly topographical)
- Evening Glow, Venice, by Sir Alfred East (1912, a "red" Venice)
- Ruskin's Venice (modern photographs)
Bibliography
"Original Etching by Wilfrid Ball." Art Journal, 1891: 340. Internet Archive. Sponsored by the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Web. 17 September 2022.
"Print made by Wilfrid Williams Ball...." Yale Center for British Art. 17 September 2022.
Created 17 September 2022