El Campo Santo

By the time Turner painted this in 1842, the long white wall on the water had a fairly recent history. Venice used to bury its dead inside the crowded city, but under Napoleon's rule the graves were moved out to the island of San Michele, the Campo Santo, or holy field, that gives the picture its name. Turner had visited Venice three times and painted it obsessively. Here he is barely interested in solid architecture at all. Boats, sails, water and the cemetery wall are all dissolved into a bright haze, forms melting into their own reflections. He showed it at the Royal Academy that year beside a companion picture of the crowded customs house at the mouth of the Grand Canal.