Eton College

Canaletto had built his fortune painting Venice for English tourists, so when war and a slump dried up that trade in the 1740s he did the logical thing and followed his customers home. He spent about nine years in England, and this view of Eton College across the Thames comes near the end of it, around 1754, just before he went back to Venice for good. The great 15th-century chapel rises over a lazy summer afternoon of picnics, fishing and boats. Look closely and the buildings don't quite add up, the proportions off in places, as if he pieced the scene together later from a quick sketch rather than sitting in front of it. It is the only pure landscape he is known to have painted.