![Joseph Mallord William Turner - Venice from the Giudecca [1840]](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3787/13421880203_080b4628e4.jpg)
We take for granted nowadays that Turner is a great and significant painter, but it was not always so. The critical responses to this and particularly the other pictures, such as The Slave Ship, exhibited by him at the Royal Academy in 1840, were mostly harsh and insulting. Only the support of discerning collectors and connoisseurs of contemporary painting like John Sheepshanks enabled Turner to persist in painting the poetic and modern way he saw the world.
His romantic view of Venice is not strictly accurate in a photographic sense, but gives a vivid, dream-like impression of an ancient city under a beautiful sky. As so often in his works, the sea and the buildings in this painting are depicted with a theatrical grandeur. Many artists before and since Turner's time have painted the city, but this is still one of the best known images.
[Victoria & Albert Museum, London - Oil on canvas, 61 x 91.4 cm]