Under the Italian sun
ONE evening, while I was enjoying a cigar in a gondola, I saw Turner in another one sketching San Giorgio, brilliantly lit up by the setting sun. I felt quite ashamed of myself idling away my time whilst he was hard at work so late,’ recalled the painter William Callow.
It was late August 1840, when Turner was 65 and still working tirelessly to fill his sketchbooks with the pencil and watercolour studies that were always the absorbing objective of his travels. Indeed, the artist found himself re-energised by this two-week sojourn. In addition to his impressionistic renderings of well-known prospects, he sketched the markets, (fishing boats) and buildings, including Santa Lucia (later lost to the railway station), explored poorer quarters such as Dorsoduro and roamed
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