If you vis­it London’s Nation­al Gallery’s Room 38 you will see a fine col­lec­tion of paint­ings by Canalet­to (Gio­van­ni Anto­nio Canal, 1697–1768), the Ital­ian artist famed for his vedute of Venice (a vedu­ta is a high­ly detailed, usu­al­ly large-scale paint­ing or print of a cityscape or some oth­er vista). He was born in Venice, the son of anoth­er painter, Bernar­do Canal, hence his mononym Canalet­to, or “lit­tle Canal” (and noth­ing to do with the Venet­ian canals that he lat­er depict­ed). Canalet­to was appren­ticed to his father whose main career was in the­atre set design, so he got to work on paint­ing the­atri­cal scenes for operas by the likes of Vival­di, Scar­lat­ti and oth­ers. How­ev­er, it was when, in around 1723, he began to paint the dai­ly life of Venice and its peo­ple, that he found his true call­ing.

Canalet­to sold many of his grand scenes of the canals of Venice and the Doge’s Palace to Eng­lish­men on their Grand Tour, and his career real­ly took off when he began his asso­ci­a­tion with Joseph Smith, an Eng­lish busi­ness­man and col­lec­tor liv­ing in Venice who was to become British Con­sul in Venice in 1744. Smith became the artist’s prin­ci­pal agent and patron, and was instru­men­tal in intro­duc­ing Grand Tourists to his work and arrang­ing com­mis­sions. He also acquired near­ly fifty paint­ings and one hun­dred fifty draw­ings from Canalet­to, the largest and finest sin­gle group of the artist’s works, which he sold to King George III in 1762.

In the 1740s, the War of the Aus­tri­an Suc­ces­sion led to a reduc­tion in the num­ber of British vis­i­tors to Venice (war can do that) and thus dis­rupt­ed Canaletto’s mar­ket, and so in 1746 he moved to Lon­don, liv­ing in Lon­don’s Soho dis­trict and suc­cess­ful­ly pro­duc­ing views of Lon­don and of his patrons’ hous­es and cas­tles. He remained in Eng­land until 1755 and returned to Venice where he con­tin­ued to paint until his death in 1768. His con­nec­tion with Britain had been sealed, how­ev­er, and now you can find his paint­ings not only in the Nation­al Gallery but in Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion and indeed there’s a fine set of 24 in the din­ing room at Woburn Abbey.

Here is just one from the Roy­al Col­lec­tion, The Mouth of the Grand Canal look­ing West towards the Car­ità (1729–30), and then a view of the exquis­ite Woburn Abbey din­ing room.