Венеция: Догана и Сан-Джорджо-Маджоре

Turner showed this bright view of Venice at the Royal Academy in 1834, the customs house point and the domed church of San Giorgio Maggiore shimmering across the lagoon in clear morning light. He had spent only a few short visits in the city, yet Venice gave him exactly the thing he chased, water and sky dissolving into one another. The Manchester textile manufacturer Henry McConnell bought it, and the next year asked Turner for a companion piece as its opposite, a night scene of coal being loaded onto boats on the industrial Tyne. So this sunlit Italian harbour was made to hang beside the smoke and moonlight of working England. The tiny figures on the quay barely interrupt the glare off the water.