Grand Canal, Venice

Since Canaletto, painting Venice had meant painting architecture. He and his followers set down the palace fronts along the Grand Canal so exactly that a visitor could name them one by one, and travellers carried those views home as souvenirs. Renoir, who reached the city in the autumn of 1881, went the other way. The Museum of Fine Arts identifies this as the stretch of canal between the Ca' Foscari palace and the Rialto Bridge, and admits it is barely recognisable. The stone façades melt, and what is left is their reflection on the water, pink, yellow and orange. Renoir sold the picture to Durand-Ruel in May 1882. Seven years later, in July 1889, the dealer's New York branch sold it to Alexander Cochrane, a Boston chemical manufacturer, who kept it for 30 years, until his death in 1919, and left it to the museum.