(Venice 1712–1793)
The Rialto Bridge and the Riva del Vin, Venice,
oil on canvas, 37.5 x 50.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Count Avogli;
Heilbuth Collection, Copenhagen;
Duncan Phillips Memorial Collection, Washington;
Gallery Knoedler, New York;
C. V. Hickox Collection, New York;
The Hon. Michael Astor collection;
sale, Christie’s, London, April 11, 1975, lot 66 (as Francesco Guardi);
with Thos. Agnew & Sons, London;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 1988, lot 144 (as Francesco Guardi);
sale, Christie’s, New York, 16 January 1996, lot 141 (as Francesco Guardi);
where acquired by the present owner

Exhibited:
Copenhagen, Museum of Fine Arts, 1920, no. 39;
London, Matthiesen Gallery, Venetian Paintings, 23 February – 23 April 1939, no. 69;
Louisville, Speed Art Museum, Eighteenth Century Venetian Paintings, 2 – 29 June 1948, no. 13

Literature:
D. Phillips, A collection in the making. A survey of the problems involved in collecting pictures together with brief estimates of the painters in the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Massachusetts 1926, p. 98, fig. 3 (as Francesco Guardi);
A. Morassi, Antonio e Francesco Guardi, Milan 1973, vol. I, p. 410, no. 540 (as Francesco Guardi);
L. R. Bortolatto, L’opera completa di Francesco Guardi, Milan 1974, p. 137, no. 848 (as Francesco Guardi)

The present painting is a late work by the great Venetian painter Francesco Guardi. It represents one of the most iconic sights of the city of Venice, which in the eighteenth century was immortalised by many view painters, vedutisti, and replicated, even by Guardi, in numerous variants over the course of his career, such as those in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. no. 1942.9.27) and in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (inv. no. 81LC00106).

The foreground of this painting is animated by numerous gondolas and other boats on the Grand Canal, the Rialto Bridge is at the centre of the composition, and on its left are the Palazzo dei Dieci Savi and a little beyond is the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi. Part of the Riva del Vin, which runs along the canal and connects the bridge with San Silvestro is also visible. On the right side, beyond the bridge is the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and just visible in the foreground on the Riva del Ferro, is the corner of Palazzo Dolfin Manin.

This view of Venice was also depicted on several occasions by Giovanni Antonio Canal, il Canaletto, who also made many variants of this subject; one such example is in the Wallace Collection, London (inv. no. P511). For Francesco Guardi these paintings certainly served as models against which to measure himself, as he skilfully attained a distance from his master’s style, developing a personal and entirely original pictorial language of his own, as is demonstrated by the present painting. In contrast to the meticulously sharp vision Canaletto applied to his views of the city, Guardi managed to capture the picturesque variety of scenes that animate the lagoon city. The buildings and figures are drawn with a vibrant brush strokes, achieving a general impression of poetically atmospheric effects, that is accentuated by his choice of palette wherein the buildings are given reddish-brown colours tempered by a succession of ochre tones that blend harmoniously with the greens and blues of the water and sky.

Francesco Guardi was the last great master of the Venetian view painting. He trained in the family studio with his elder brother Gian Antonio and he spent his entire life in Venice. He began as a figure painter and only at an advanced stage in his career, probably around the mid-1750s when he was already in his maturity, did he begin to dedicate himself to view painting, owing to the considerable demand of the international market. Guardi was also a history painter, a genre painter and a portraitist as well as a painter of landscapes and invented capricci all of which attained great acclaim among his Venetian contemporaries and patrons.