This post is one of a series of blog posts covering my independent research on previously unidentified locations depicted in John Singer Sargent pieces. Pieces are identified using their Yale University Press ID numbers, as published in the series John Singer Sargent: The Complete Paintings, co-authored by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray. All findings are my own, represent my own opinions, and were reached using a combination of my own intuition & various publicly available tools, such as Google Maps & Google Street View.

This post covers the location depicted in John Singer Sargent’s piece titled “Venetian Canal” (Yale 1084), a beautiful watercolor with a view of a bridge from a canal, with warm air filling the scene.

Here is the piece in question:

This one was difficult to identify due to the buildings being largely generic Venetian style buildings. The biggest clue for me in this one is the bridge itself. While there are hundreds of bridges in Venice, they are surprisingly quite varied in shape, size, construction materials, and details, and it can be helpful to narrow down the possibilities by studying these aspects. Looking through an inventory of photos of bridges of Venice helped me nail down this bridge to be Ponte Sant'Andrea. The piece was painted near the intersection of Rio di Sant'Andrea and Rio Ca' Dolce, looking west.

There are other clues as well. Looking closely, one can see the corners of two opposing buildings in the foreground - at the far left and far right of the painting. Two corners in view suggests at least a three-point intersection of canals, rather than just, say, a bend in a canal. Additionally, there seems to be a second bridge in the background, along with a fondamenta to the right - both suggested by faded reddish paint strokes.

The building on the right in the foreground looks completely different between photo and painting, but it occurred to me that the building in the photo is exceptionally modern, and its construction / renovation likely dates to after the painting was created. Finally, looking through the catalog raisonné, I see that Sargent painted this bridge before (Yale 1097), but from the opposite direction, which is promising, since he is known to have painted the same subject matter more than once, and it shows that he did visit this area of Venice. .

Date of identification: c. 1/31/2024, reported to the authors on 2/1/2024