# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Beneath a sky of swirling cloud and warm sunlight, we take in a view of the Doge's Palace, one of the best-known buildings in Venice. It overlooks a promenade known as the Riva degli Schiavoni and the basin of San Marco.

Canaletto has given the scene a sense of tranquillity and calm. In the foreground, we see groups of idle sailors, merchants and foreign visitors, each one observed with great individuality; a little further back, Venetians go about their everyday lives.

We are positioned just above the quayside, so that the watercraft - sailing boats, barges, gondolas, and a colourful fusta (single-masted boat) - fill the right-hand side of the composition. From up close, you can see the varied brushwork Canaletto used to describe different textures and materials, particularly the broken timbers and stone littering the water's edge, and the white sail on the far right.

Beneath a sky of swirling cloud and warm sunlight, we take in a view of the Doge's Palace, one of the best-known buildings in Venice. It overlooks a promenade called the Riva degli Schiavoni and the basin of San Marco. The Riva degli Schiavoni is named after the Slavic people from Dalmatia - present-day Croatia - who settled in this part of the city. Canaletto has given the scene a sense of tranquillity and calm.

While Canaletto sometimes captured important ceremonies taking place along the waterfront - see The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day, for example - his subject here is the city in a quieter moment. A group of idle sailors surround the column of San Marco; one of them, hands on his hips and stood beside a barrel, is eager to explore his new surroundings. Nearby, we see merchants and foreign visitors, perhaps recently arrived from ports around the Mediterranean or beyond. Just in front of us and to the right, several boatmen pause for a moment to look out over the lagoon.

The churches and houses beyond the palace are laid out at a steeply receding angle, and the roof of the palace creates a line of glossary:perspective. Back on street level, this device leads our eye back towards the groups of Venetians on a leisurely walk, an old man with a walking stick and government officials in black robes, and then a knife-grinder beside a simple wooden hut. Precise brushstrokes describe the outfits and poses of the foreground figures. The palette is dominated by browns and blues, punctuated by the vivid red of hats and touches of yellow and white for the clothing.

We are positioned just above the quayside so that the watercraft - sailing boats, barges, gondolas, galleys, and the fusta (single-masted boat) covered in a red and gold striped awning - fill the right-hand side of the composition; the water is barely visible. From up close, the varied brushwork becomes apparent that Canaletto used to describe different textures and materials, particularly the splintered and broken timbers and pieces of stone littering the water's edge. Thick layers of paint (impasto) combined with areas of thinner, almost transparent, paint create the white sail on the right, capturing the form of the cloth and the effects of light on it.

Here, Canaletto paints one of Venice's most iconic waterfront vistas. He repeatedly used ordinary Venetians and parts of the city that were popular among tourists as inspiration. They were also painted by Canaletto's contemporaries, among them his nephew and talented pupil Bernardo Bellotto, and later in the century by Francesco Guardi.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canaletto, Venice: The Doge's Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Canaletto, Venice: The Doge's Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni, late 1730s. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This small picture shows the great Piazza San Marco - the most famous square in Venice. We look through an archway, stood in the shadows just behind a group of figures; it is as if we are walking past them along the colonnade. A vendor surrounded by baskets shows his wares to two gentlemen. A man perched on a barrel turns his head towards us, while another peeps out from behind a pillar.

The archway focuses attention on the buildings beyond: the Basilica di San Marco, the city's most sacred church, and to the right, its campanile (bell tower). The paving stones and buildings that line the square recede at a sharp angle, which Canaletto exaggerated, leading our eye deeper into the scene. Dots and swirls of paint pick out people in the distance, creating the impression that we are looking on from afar.

This small picture shows the great Piazza San Marco - the most famous square in Venice - seen through a tall archway. Canaletto had already used this device in a view of London (private collection), in which we look at the city from beneath the newly constructed Westminster Bridge, but it is a unique composition among his Venetian scenes.

Canaletto has placed us in the shadows, just behind a small group of figures; it's as if we are walking past them along the colonnade. A vendor surrounded by baskets shows his wares to two gentlemen, though it's not clear what he is selling. A small dog waits patiently. Perched on a barrel, a man turns his head towards us, while another peeps out from behind a pillar.

The archway focuses attention on the buildings beyond: a frontal view of the Basilica di San Marco, the city's most sacred church - it housed the relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist - and to the right, its elegant campanile (bell tower). Canaletto drew and painted the campanile numerous times, but he nearly always showed it as taller and more slender than it was in reality. Between the campanile and the column in front of us, we catch a tiny glimpse of the Doge's Palace.

The paving stones and buildings that line the square recede at a sharp angle, which Canaletto exaggerated, leading our eye deeper into the scene. The white stone lines laid across the square - marking the position of temporary stalls during religious possessions, public celebrations and merchant fairs - line up perfectly with the furthest left arch of the basilica beyond. As in the companion piece to this work, Canaletto altered the perspective to create these pleasing points of intersection.

On the left we see the Procuratie Vecchie, Venice's longest building. Stretching 500 feet along the piazza, it housed the offices of the procurators of San Marco, a prestigious position responsible for the upkeep of the piazza and its architecture. The Procuratie Nuove is on the opposite side (its colonnade was chosen as the viewpoint for the pendant painting). The arch from which we view the square here no longer exists: this side of the piazza was demolished in 1807 by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French occupation of Venice, and replaced with his palatial residence (now the Museo Correr).

Although this picture is unusual in its viewpoint, the muted colour palette and strongly outlined architectural features are typical of Canaletto's late style. The scene is softly lit. Dots and swirls of paint pick out the basilica and the people in the distance, creating the impression that we are looking on from afar.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Canaletto, Venice: Piazza San Marco, about 1758. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.

# data[].attributes.body
Claude Monet

# data[].attributes.body
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas

# data[].attributes.headline
Pictorial Composition by H. R. Poore (Selections)

# data[].attributes.subject
Pictorial Composition by H. R. Poore (Selections)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
H.R.Poore - Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures-1

# data[].attributes.body
Mary Acton, Learning to Look at Paintings, 2nd ed, 2009

Susan Woodford, Looking at Pictures, 1983

# data[].attributes.body
What narrative is shown or suggested in the painting?

Is there symbolism in the painting?

What is the composition of the painting?

How is colour used in the painting?  What colours/pigments do you think the artist used?

How does the artwork depict and illuminate the material on which it is based

# data[].attributes.body
Helene Roberts (ed) (1998), Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography

Xavier Barral I Altet (ed) (2003), Dictionnaire critique d'iconographie occidentale

Getty 'Guide to Imagery' series, e.g. Matilde Battistini (2002), Symbols and Allegories in Art

Flammarion Iconographic Guides, e.g.
Duchet-Suchaux (1994) & Pastoreau (eds), The Bible and the Saints
Aghion (1996), Barbillon & Lissarrague, Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity

James Hall (1979), Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Turner's painting shows the final journey of the Temeraire, as the ship is towed from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped. The veteran warship had played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but by 1838 was over 40 years old and had been sold off by the Admiralty. When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839, the painting was accompanied by lines Turner had adapted from Thomas Campbell's poem, Ye Mariners of England: 'The flag which braved the battle and the breeze, / No longer owns her.'

It is unlikely that Turner witnessed the ship being towed; instead, he imaginatively recreated the scene using contemporary reports. Set against a blazing sunset, the last voyage of the Temeraire takes on a greater symbolic meaning, as the age of sail gives way to the age of steam.

Turner's painting shows the final journey of the Temeraire, as the ship is towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped.

Built of the wood from over 5000 oaks, the 98-gun, three-decker veteran warship had played a distinguished role during the Napoleonic Wars, defending Nelson's flagship Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. With the advent of peace in 1815, most of Britain's great warships became redundant, and from 1820 the Temeraire had been moored off Sheerness, serving mainly as a supply ship. In June 1838 the Admiralty ordered that the decaying Temeraire be sold, as the ship was by then over 40 years old and worth only the value of the timbers. Prior to sale, Temeraire was stripped by the Navy of all re-usable parts - including masts and yards - and reduced to an empty hull. The ship was sold for £5530 to John Beatson, a Rotherhithe shipbreaker and timber merchant. As the mastless 2110-ton Temeraire was unable to sail independently, Beatson hired two steam tugs to tow it along the Thames from Sheerness to his breaker's wharf at Rotherhithe. Moving the Temeraire took about two days, and the ship finally berthed at Beatson's wharf on 6 September.

It is unlikely that Turner witnessed the Temeraire being towed - he may not even have been in England at the time - although he could have previously seen the ship when travelling past Sheerness. Instead, he imaginatively recreated the scene using contemporary reports. News of the ship's fate would have aroused his patriotism. Not only was the Temeraire the largest ship ever to have been sold by the Admiralty for breaking up and the largest to have been brought so high up the Thames, but Turner certainly knew of its action at the Battle of Trafalgar. He had already included a glimpse of the ship in a large painting of 1806, The Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory (Tate, London), and in adopting its nickname, the 'Fighting' Temeraire, he explicitly acknowledged its action at the battle which, over 30 years later, continued to be commemorated in literature and art.

Turner's painting is as much a memorial to the heroic history of the Temeraire as it is a record of the ship's final journey. He took liberties with the facts, in part to allow the ship to retain its dignity and to draw out symbolic aspects of the image. To this end, he has shown the ship's three lower masts intact, their sails furled and still partly rigged. He has also replaced the original black and yellow paintwork with white and gold, giving the ship a ghostly presence as it glides across the glassy surface of the Thames. As it moves up river, Temeraire passes a small river craft, its sail hanging listlessly, with a square-rigger in full sail just beyond.

Turner has kept the detail of the Temeraire to a minimum but, tellingly, indicates that the ship no longer flies the Union flag, having ceased to be naval property. The flag's absence was noted in the lines of poetry that accompanied the picture when exhibited at the Royal Academy, which Turner had adapted from Thomas Campbell's poem, Ye Mariners of England: 'The flag which braved the battle and the breeze, / No longer own her.' The inclusion of the tug's white commercial flag, flying prominently from its tall mast, adds to the pathos of the Temeraire's missing flag.

Although the Temeraire was towed by two tugs, Turner has depicted only one pulling the ship (a second tug is just visible in the distance). He has also deliberately altered the construction of the tug, placing its black funnel in front of its mast rather than behind it, allowing a long plume of sooty smoke to blow backwards through the Temeraire's masts. This revision heightens the drama of the scene and adds the possible symbolic dimension of steam power over taking sail power. Literal-minded viewers were quick to point out Turner's apparent 'mistake', but he was furious when the tug's design was 'corrected' in a later engraving of the painting. Some critics, such as the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, viewed the painting as critical of the tug and what it represented, but Turner's attitude to industrial modernity was more ambiguous. Although he may have mourned the passing of a great warship from the age of sail, he also acknowledged - and often painted - the realities of modern life and regularly travelled on new modes of transport, including steamships and the railways.

The sunset that fills the right-hand third of the painting is fundamental to the picture's elegiac tone, as it reinforces the narrative of the Temeraire approaching its final berth. As the critic John Ruskin observed, Turner's 'most deeply crimsoned sunset skies' often signified death. The blazing copper hues of the clouds echo the tug's fiery smoke and the white disk of the sun itself is counterbalanced by the dark buoy in the lower right corner, which also creates scale and leads us into the scene. As the sun sets, a pale crescent moon rises in the top left corner. Turner had long been interested in the simultaneous appearance of the sun and the moon, but here their presence perhaps also accentuates notions of transition. Below the sun, a forest of pale masts - described by Thackeray as 'a countless navy that fades away' - recedes into the distance. The sunset is, however, another instance of Turner's poetic licence. Not only is it likely that the Temeraire reached Rotherhithe in the afternoon, but Turner's sun is also setting in the wrong direction. A ship coming up the Thames would be heading west and could not have had the sunset behind it in the east. Turner's positioning of the sun provoked a lively debate in The Times.

When the picture was first exhibited in 1839 at the Royal Academy, reviewers singled it out for praise, with many noting its poetic and patriotic resonances. Despite offers to buy it, Turner kept the painting till he died in 1851. It seems to have held a special place in his affections - he referred to it as 'his Darling' - and he may have decided early on to gift the painting to the nation. It was among the first works in the Turner Bequest to be put on display and remains one of the National Gallery's - and Britain's - most popular paintings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mary Acton's  'questions to ask yourself when standing in front of a painting'

# data[].attributes.subject
Mary Acton's  'questions to ask yourself when standing in front of a painting'

# data[].attributes.body
Composition: Where are the dominant lines of organisation?

Space: Where are you in relation to the picture? Is it much larger or much smaller than you expected?

Form: Is there a three-dimensional feeling about the picture? If so, where is it?  Is it in some parts of the picture and not others?

Tone: What part does light and dark play in the picture?

Colour: Is the colour part of the structure of the picture or is it used more for expression?

Setting: Are you seeing the painting, drawing or print as it was intended to be seen or has its location and lighting been altered?  How much has restoration changed the original?

Subject-matter: How does the subject-matter, or lack of it, affect the way you see the picture?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Antonello da Messina | Saint Jerome in his Study | NG1418 | National Gallery, London

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in his Study, about 1475. Read about this painting, learn the key facts and zoom in to discover more.

# data[].attributes.headline
Related Paintings - Monet's Water Lilies 

# data[].attributes.subject
Related Paintings - Monet's Water Lilies 

# data[].attributes.body
This Wikipedia page has all the paintings.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Lilies_(Monet_series)
Looking through them is an wonderful experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Claude Monet, The Water Lilies - The Clouds, 1920-1926, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Claude Monet, The Water Lilies - Setting Sun, 1920-1926, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Claude Monet, Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond, c. 1920, 200 × 1276 cm (78.74 × 502.36 in), oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Water Lilies ( French: Nymphéas ) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926). The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

Monet's long-standing preference for producing and exhibiting a series of paintings related by subject and perspective began in 1889, with at least ten paintings done at the Valley of the Creuse, which were shown at the Galerie Georges Petit. Among his other famous series are his .

During the 1920s, the state of France built a pair of oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie as a permanent home for eight water lily murals by Monet. The exhibit opened to the public on 16 May 1927, a few months after Monet's death. Sixty water lily paintings from around the globe were assembled for a special exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in 1999.

The paintings are on prominent display at museums all over the world, including the Princeton University Art Museum, Musée Marmottan Monet, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Museum of Wales, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, The Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, and the Legion of Honor. In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston celebrated its 150th anniversary with some of Monet's Water Lilies paintings.

On 19 June 2007, one of Monet's Water Lily paintings sold for £18.5 million at a Sotheby's auction in London. On 24 June 2008 another of his Water Lily paintings, Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, sold for almost £41 million at Christie's in London, almost double the estimate of £18 to £24 million.

In May 2010, it was announced that the 1906 Nymphéas work would be auctioned in London in June 2010. The painting had an estimated sale price of between £30 and £40 million. Giovanna Bertazzoni, Christie's auction house director and head of impressionist and modern art, said, "Claude Monet's water-lily paintings are amongst the most recognised and celebrated works of the 20th Century and were hugely influential to many of the following generations of artists." The sale took place on 23 June 2010 at the auction house and the painting attracted bids of up to £29 million, but it ultimately failed to sell.

On 6 May 2014, one of the Water Lilies, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas, was auctioned at Christie's, New York City for $27 million.[16]

In June 2014, one of the Water Lilies, Nymphéas, sold for US$54 million at a Sotheby's auction in London. This piece was auctioned to an anonymous buyer, but the piece went on to be part of the exhibition "Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse" at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, starting in 2015. The co-chairman of Sotheby's modern and impressionist art department, Helena Newman, claims that the result is at the top of the original estimated selling price. This price was between 34 and 51 million USD.

While many of Monet's masterpieces have sold, there are still an estimated 250 oil paintings from this series. The collection is widely popular, with many of these pieces residing in exhibits that have yet to go to auction. The paintings have been catalogued by Daniel Wildenstein in his Monet: Catalogue Raisonné.

Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, 1919, private collection

Water Lilies, 1919, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Nymphéas (Waterlilies), 1914-1917, National Gallery of Australia

Closeup of Water lily pond, one of 18 views of the pond, 1899, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Water Lilies ( French: Nymphéas ) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926). The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artistic production during the last thirty years of his life.

# data[].attributes.headline
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway, 

# data[].attributes.subject
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway, 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A steam engine comes towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge was completed in 1838. We are looking east towards London as the train heads to the west. The exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye follows to the horizon, suggests the speed with which the train bursts into view through the rain. Turner lightly brushed in a hare roughly midway along the rail track to represent the speed of the natural world in contrast to the mechanised speed of the engine. The animal is now invisible as the paint has become transparent with age, but it can be seen in an 1859 engraving of the painting.

Turner frequently painted scenes of contemporary life and was particularly interested in industry and technology. As he often used new forms of transport, including steam trains, it is unlikely that the painting is a rejection of modernity. Instead, he saw both the train and the bridge as subjects worthy of being painted.

A steam engine rushes towards us as it speeds along a bridge through the rain. The bridge is the Maidenhead Viaduct, which crosses the Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead on the newly laid Great Western line to Bristol and Exeter. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the viaduct was completed In 1838 and in use from July 1839. We are looking east towards London as the train heads towards the west of England. The arched bridge on the left is Taylor's road bridge, built in the 1770s. The engine, of the 'Firefly' class, pulls a train of unroofed open-goods wagons in which passengers, paying the cheapest rates, could travel. Average engine speed on the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1844 was 33 mph, but on long level stretches, such as the Maidenhead Viaduct, an unprecedented 60 mph could be reached - faster than any galloping horse.

The 1840s was a period of 'railway mania', and by 1844 the GWR had already constructed over 100 miles of line, which Turner could have travelled on during the previous six or seven years. We cannot be certain if this picture was inspired by a recent journey, or if he had travelled on this stretch of track. However, in an account told to the critic John Ruskin, Jane O'Meara (later Mrs John Smith) related how, as a young woman aged eighteen, she had been travelling to London on that line during a stormy night in June 1843. A fellow passenger - 'with the most wonderful eyes' - had leaned out of the train window for almost ten minutes when the train had come to a halt at Bristol during the storm. On seeing Rain, Steam and Speed at the Royal Academy, she claimed the passenger must have been Turner.

Even if Turner had not travelled on this line, he would have known contemporary engravings of trains moving diagonally and at speed through the landscape. These engravings may have given him the idea for a railway painting based upon the principles of perspective he had taught himself through his study of Poussin and Claude, and which he had included in his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. Turner had previously used this type of diagonal recession with great effect - for example, in the dramatically foreshortened perspective of Westminster Bridge in The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Here he uses the exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye follows to the horizon, to suggest the speed with which the train bursts into view through the rain. Turner further accentuates this effect by reducing the double rail track across the bridge to a single narrow line.

The art historian John Gage observed: 'the title of the picture makes clear that Turner was painting not a view of the Great Western Railway, but an allegory of the forces of nature.' These forces of nature include the rain, which falls steadily but not so heavily as to entirely obscure the view or the gleams of sunlight that fall on the woods and fields either side of the bridge. Steam is represented by the three small puffs emerging from the engine's funnel - in 1844 engines did not produce the great clouds of steam often associated with steam locomotives. Speed is most obviously embodied by the train itself, but Turner included another detail - a hare, running along the track ahead of it. A late addition, the hare was lightly brushed on top of the existing paint, roughly midway along the rail track, and is now invisible because the paint has become transparent with age. It can be seen in an 1859 engraving of the painting by Robert Brandard, who specifically sought to clarify details in the painting. According to the artist George Leslie, who as a boy had watched Turner putting the final touches to the painting the day before it went on public exhibition in 1844, the hare, not the train, was meant to represent speed. Turner further emphasises the theme of speed by including two small details. On the river on the left, you can see a small boat and, barely visible near the right edge of the picture, a man drives a horse-drawn plough. Both the boat and the plough are examples of relatively slow, non-mechanised activity. As in The Fighting Temeraire, Turner contrasts the pre-industrial with the modern.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A steam engine comes towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge was completed in 1838. We are looking east towards London as the train heads to the west.