Venice, Giudecca Canal, Morning

In 1904 Paul Signac made his first trip to Venice, a city he partly saw through the eyes of Turner, whose work he admired. There he painted in watercolour, quick sheets made on the spot, and once he was home he turned them into oil paintings. This canvas is one of them. It is signed and dated 1905 in the lower left corner, a year after the journey. Across the water rise the domes of Santa Maria della Salute, the church built after the plague of 1630 at the mouth of the Grand Canal, with sails in front of it and gondola prows in the foreground, all laid down in separate square touches of colour. Before it reached Zurich the painting passed through notable hands, among them Gustave Fayet, a collector in the south of France known for his Gauguins, and Bernhard Koehler, the Berlin industrialist who supported the Blue Rider painters. Emil Bührle bought it from a New York dealer in 1951.