(Palmanova 1762–1844 Milan)
The Molo by the Biblioteca Marciana facing the entrance of the Canal Grande, Venice,
oil on canvas, 57.5 x 79.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, England;
where acquired by the present owner

The present unpublished canvas, like its pendant, lot 132, is a work by Giuseppe Bernardino Bison, perhaps the most interesting master working in the Venetian ambit at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

This view frames the Libreria Marcianta and the Fonteghetto della Farina on the right. In the nineteenth century this area was transformed with the introduction of the neoclassical Coffeehouse, which was a social gathering place within the Giardini Reali di San Marco (1817). In the background of our view we recognise the church of Santa Maria dell’Ascensione which was demolished in 1824, while to the left are the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute and the Punta della Dogana.

The Bacino di San Marco, with its most celebrated procession of monuments, was the subject of numerous views by Giuseppe Bernardino Bison. If however, one investigates the city facades towards the lagoon, which constitute its most recognisable features, a visitor of the day would have recognised the new early nineteenth-century architectural insertions to the built fabric of the city, however rather representing these, in the present painting the artist instead let himself be swayed by the surreal image of Venice: that is its eighteenth century reality.

Similar to this work’s pendant, the compositional basis for the present painting derives from an invention by Canaletto, made famous by the 1768 Brustolon edition of prints, which was first issued as plate XII (Prospectus a Columna S. Theodori ad ingressum Magni Canalis) in Urbis Venetiarum prospectus celebriores ex Antonii Canal tabulis XXXVIII. Aere expressi ab Antonio Visentini ..., Venice 1742. It should not be surprising that Bison used this engraving as the basis of his Venetian view, and conceiving this painting and its pendant as a pair, he evidently wished to offer a comprehensive view of the city from East to West.

Such a discipline, which employed the canonical models and images from the most famous exponents of view painting (Canaletto, Marieschi), was available to the last generation of eighteenth-century artists in Venice. who could finally count on an academic training, the essential corresponding form of preparation, that according to traditional practice encouraged the exercise of working after the finest paintings of the past. It is therefore understandable that even Bison, who was engaged in the study of view painting and in its essential constituent of perspective, was unable to avoid the example of the most celebrated Venetian eighteenth-century specialist in the field, Canaletto. Indeed, all of his contemporaries who specialised in view painting at the time also reveal a similar attitude, they include: Roberto Roberti, Vincenzo Chilone, Carlo Grubacs and Giuseppe Borsato.

It should not therefore be believed that Canaletto’s repertoire had passed its heyday, in fact, his Prospettive were reissued by the publisher Giuseppe Battagia from Venice in 1833, and again in 1836, and then towards 1840, and issued with the recommendation to visitors to follow the itinerary of the views by gondola along the Canal Grande.

The present richly sentimental view, which conveys the myth of Venice, in some sense makes Bison into a history painter. It also demonstrates the preferred collecting taste of the upper-middle bourgeoisies of the era, who had a nostalgia for a lost epoch. The painting reveals all its freshness in witnessing the sensitive revisiting of all the most celebrated moments of Venetian history. Moreover, it was conceived at the creative heart of a city with a flourishing art market, and reveals a sensibility to the emerging taste for the ‘historic romanticism’, which helped to produce the myth of Venice.

It can be said that Bison, more than any other artist of the era, became a counterpoint to Canaletto. He replicated many of the latter’s atmospheric views, capturing the breadth of horizons with all the required attention to the details of buildings, and on occasion deploying changes to the urban fabric, especially those prominently reported in the press. Moreover, Bison also devoted himself to capturing the everyday life that animated the city, focusing particualrly on his singularly conceived figures, called macchiette.

Like its pendant this painting appears to reveal a singularly personal approach to design, compared with the Venetian derivation of his macchia, This approach suggests that the present painting belongs to the years of the artist’s so-called anni ‘triestino-milanesi’.

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was born in Palmanova del Friuli and entered the Venetian artistic milieu when he was still a youth. Here, he achieved considerable success, even as a decorator of interiors. He gained the greatest acclaim, however, as a landscape and view painter, to the extent that by circa 1800 he had gained a substantial following in Trieste, which was a city then inhabited by a wealthy bourgeoisie that was attentive to collecting contemporary art. This community adopted Bison for his ability to unite those qualities of painting ‘touched’ by the delicacy of eighteenth century art, conjoined with a significant revitalisation of subject and style proper to the cultural renewal of the nineteenth century. With these credentials, by the time the artist reached an advanced age, he sought a new fortune and moved to Milan in 1831. As the newspapers record, he continued to receive acclaim in this new city.