Londres : vue à travers une arche du pont de Westminster

By 1746 war on the Continent had dried up Canaletto's trade. For years wealthy Englishmen on the Grand Tour had bought his shimmering views of Venice to carry home, but the fighting made travel to Italy hard, so the painter simply followed his customers to London. There he found a subject being built in front of him. He frames the whole city through a single arch of the new Westminster Bridge, still unfinished when he painted it, the raw stone curving overhead like a stage arch. Through the gap the Thames is crowded with boats, and beyond them rise the dome of Saint Paul's and the tall wooden York Water Tower, given the same clear, sunlit air Canaletto had always brought to Venice.