Canaletto, 'Eton College', about 1754

Eton College

Canaletto

Room 37

About the work

Overview

This view is from the bank of the River Thames, looking across a sprawling meadow towards Eton College on the horizon. A shady glade gives way to a softly lit landscape, with folk enjoying the summer’s day – a family group are picnicking while other people fish and boat nearby. A finely painted tree frames and leads the eye towards the middle distance, as do the layers of landscape and river bathed in subtle variations of light and shadow.

There are a number of inaccuracies in the depiction of the chapel, college buildings and surrounding houses, which suggests the artist had little knowledge of the view and perhaps relied on a sketch made on the spot at an earlier date. Painted in around 1754, this is one of the last pictures Canaletto made during his nine-year stay in England; by 1755 he had returned home to Venice.

In-depth

This view is from the bank of the River Thames, looking across a sprawling meadow towards Eton College on the horizon. Most of Canaletto’s English views overlook the Thames in the heart of London, in the same way that his most engaging Venetian scenes are never far from the Grand Canal. But here he has captured the river’s peaceful, meandering journey through the countryside.

A shady glade gives way to a softly lit river bank, with folk enjoying the fine summer’s day – away from the hustle and bustle of city life, they fish, boat and picnic. There’s a family group just in front of us, the smartly dressed man carrying a basket. They may have been brought up river by the boatman emerging over the riverbank and carrying an oar nearby. On the far side of the river, you can just make out groups of people out for a stroll.

The dominant building is the chapel, finished in 1482, and to its right the red-brick buildings of Eton College, a school founded by King Henry VI in 1440. There are a number of inaccuracies in the depiction of these buildings and many of those that surround them, which suggests the artist had little knowledge of the view. He perhaps relied on a sketch made on the spot at an earlier date, or an inaccurate drawing or engraving by someone else.

A finely painted tree frames the scene and leads the eye towards the middle distance, as do the layers of landscape and river bathed in subtle variations of light and shadow. These were well-established features of landscape painting, present in the work of the seventeenth-century Italianate landscapists – see Claude’s Landscape with Narcissus and Echo or Gaspard Dughet’s Landscape with Abraham and Issac – as well as that of contemporary English view painters, like Richard Wilson in his Holt Bridge on the River Dee. Canaletto’s scenes overlooking the River Thames in and around London influenced view painters in England in the later eighteenth century, such as Samuel Scott and William Marlow.

Painted in around 1754, this idyllic scene and another work in our collection, Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh, are among the last pictures Canaletto made during his time in England; by 1755 he had returned home to Venice. The light and airy atmosphere and the broad, fluid brushstrokes which make up the figures, foliage and still water, are typical of the artist’s late style – look at his Italian views of the late 1750s, for example Piazza San Marco and the Colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove.

We don’t know who commissioned the picture, though the subject would have appealed to any of the school’s affluent former students. This image appeared as the front cover of a volume of The Spectator, a British magazine, produced as an Eton leaving gift in 1847.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Eton College
Artist: Canaletto
Artist dates: 1697 - 1768
Date made: about 1754
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 61.6 × 107.7 cm
Acquisition credit: Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876
Inventory number: NG942
Location: Room 37
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Wynn Ellis
Frame: 18th-century English Frame (original frame)

Provenance

Almost certainly in the Sir John Tobin sale, Liverpool, 22 March 1860 (lot 33). Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876. Eton Quincentenary Exhibition, Eton, 1947 (no. 7).

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Michael Levey, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1986; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2014

Long Loan to Tate Britain (2014 - 2015)

Tate Britain

9 June 2014 - 8 June 2015
2016

Canaletto and Bellotto. Venetian painters in Europe

Gallerie d'Italia - Piazza Scala

18 November 2016 - 5 March 2017
2020

Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

The National Museum of Western Art

18 June 2020 - 18 October 2020

The National Museum of Art

3 November 2020 - 31 January 2021
2021

Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London

National Gallery of Australia

5 March 2021 - 14 June 2021

Bibliography

1899

H. Horne, 'An Inquiry into Two Pictures Recently Acquired for the National Gallery', Magazine of Art, 1899, pp. 241-6
1920

H.F. Finberg, 'Canaletto in England', The Walpole Society, IX, 1921, pp. 41-4
1929

G. Fiocco, Venetian Painting of the Seicento and Settecento, Florence 1929
1938

H.F. Finberg, 'The Lovelace Canalettos', The Burlington Magazine, LXXII/419, 1938, pp. 68-71
1954

V. Moschini, Canaletto. Testo di Vittorio Moschini, Milan 1954
1956

Levey, Michael, National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1956
1971

M. Levey, The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1971
1975

L. Puppi, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Canaletto, Paris 1975
1976

W.G. Constable and J.G. Links, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768, revised edn, Oxford 1976
1977

J.G. Links, Canaletto and His Patrons, London 1977
1985

A. Corboz, Canaletto: Una Venezia immaginaria, Milan 1985
1986

Levey, Michael, National Gallery Catalogues: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1986
1989

W.G. Constable and J.G. Links, Canaletto: Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768, 3rd edn, Oxford 1989
1989

K. Baetjer and J.G. Links, Canaletto, (exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 30 October 1989 - 21 January 1990), New York 1989
1993

J.H. Whitfield, The Englishness of Canaletto, Birmingham 1993
1993

M. Liversidge and J. Farrington, Canaletto and England, (exh. cat. Birmingham CMuseum and Art Gallery, 14 October 1993 - 9 January 1994), Birmingham 1993
1994

J.G. Links, Canaletto, revised edn, London 1994
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

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