Canaletto

Canaletto painted Venice with a clarity that makes you feel you could walk into the picture. Canals, palaces, regattas and festivals are laid out with precise perspective, bright sky and hundreds of tiny, busy figures. His views were the souvenirs of the Grand Tour.

Giovanni Antonio Canal was born in Venice in 1697, the son of a theatre scene painter, and learned from his father and from the view painter Luca Carlevarijs. After a stay in Rome he returned to Venice and built a trade with British visitors, largely through the merchant Joseph Smith, whose collection later passed to George III. From 1746 to 1755 he lived in England, painting London and country houses. The Royal Collection holds the largest group of his works, and The Stonemason’s Yard, one of his finest, is in the National Gallery, London. He died in Venice in 1768.

In The Stonemason’s Yard, look past the grand buildings to the everyday life in the foreground.