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Giovanni Antonio Canal (October 7, 1697 – April 19, 1768), better known as Canaletto, was a Venetian artist famous for his landscapes or vedute of Venice. They served as the equivalent of painted postcards for those able to afford the price. He was a son of a painter Bernardo Canal, hence his nickname Canaletto.
He served his apprenticeship with his father and his brother, and began his career as a theatrical scene painter, which was his father's occupation. Canaletto was inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini and began painting in his famous topographical style after a visit to Rome in 1719. His first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio (1723, Milan, in a private collection). One of his best pieces is The Stonemason's Yard (1729, London, the National Gallery) which depicts a humble, working area of the city. Canaletto, however, is better known for his grand scenes of the canals of Venice and the Doge's Palace.
Many of Canaletto's early works, contrary to the custom of the time, were painted 'from nature' (rather than from sketches and studies of the scene taken back to be worked on in the artist's studio). Some of his later works do revert to this custom, hinted at by the tendency for distant figures to be painted as blobs of colour - an effect produced by using a camera obscura, which blurs farther-away objects.
Many of his pictures were sold to Englishmen on their Grand Tour, most notably the merchant Joseph Smith (who was later appointed British Consul in Venice in 1744). It was Smith who acted as an agent for Canaletto, helping him to sell his paintings to other Englishmen. In the 1740s Canaletto's market was disrupted when the War of the Austrian Succession led to a reduction in the number of British visitors to Venice. Smith also arranged for the publication of a series of etchings of capriccios, but the returns were not high enough, and in 1746 Canaletto moved to London, to be closer to his market.
He remained in England until 1755, producing views of London and of his patrons' castles and houses. Overall this period was not satisfactory, partly due to dissatisfaction with the declining quality of Canaletto's work. Canaletto's work began to suffer from repetitiveness, losing its traditional fluidity, and became mechanical to the point that the English art critic George Vertue suggested that the man painting under the name 'Canaletto' was an imposter. Canaletto gave public demostrations of his work to refute this claim; however, his reputation never fully recovered in his lifetime.
After his return to Venice Canaletto was elected to the Venetian Academy in 1763. He continued to paint until his death in 1768. In his later years he often worked from old sketches, but he sometimes produced surprising new compostions. He was willing to make subtle alternations to topography for artistic effect.
Joseph Smith sold much of his collection to George III, creating the bulk of the large collection of Canalettos owned by the Royal Collection. There are many examples of his work in other British collections, including several at the Wallace Collection and a set of 24 in the dining room at Woburn Abbey. The record price paid at auction for a Canaletto is £18.6 million for View of the Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi to the Rialto, set at Sotheby's in London in July 2005. The picture was purchased by an unnamed collector.
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