Warwick Castle

When Canaletto came to London in 1746, a European war over the Austrian succession had thinned out the stream of British travellers to Venice, the buyers of his views, so he went to them. Two years later he found a patron in Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, a young aristocrat who was remodelling his family seat, the medieval castle at Warwick. Brooke had handed the castle and its park to the landscape designer Lancelot “Capability” Brown, and he ordered five paintings from Canaletto to record the work. Here the south front is seen from across the River Avon. The townspeople in the foreground are out enjoying the new walks by the river, while the renovation is still going on around them, with labourers moving earth and cutting stone.