Studies of people and others

Children, Boats, Dogs, Humans

Canaletto's interest and working choice was to represent the city of Venice he was living in at its best.

Canaletto's paintings of Venice are full of life, crowded with lots of different kinds of characters, priests, children, dogs, women (in elegant attires or working and carrying something), art sellers, elegant (rich!) tourists appreciating the sceneries, always ecstatic about the beauties of Venice, boats sailing, beggars, a whole world.

These details make Canaletto's drawings very intense, lively, but can we see it as real? Maybe. Anyway, due to how Venice was considered a tourist spot in those times, this is not surprising.

Canaletto used to experiment and prepare sketches of images of different elements that would be used for the final works. Nothing different from what most of other painters had always done, of course.

They probably served as a reservoir where he could experiment situations and then use or reuse them according to his needs.

Or just a testing for the right technique to display a person, or a situation: a scrapbook of usable material.

He really had an amazing skill in reproducing people with just a few touches, as we can see in these examples here:

 

Canaletto: [1763-66] - The Doge departing for the Lido in the Bucintoro on Ascension Day - Drawing - Pen and brown ink and grey wash, heightened with white (oxidised), over black chalk (some of it drawn with a ruler) - British Museum, London - Detail
Canaletto: [1763-66] - The Doge departing for the Lido in the Bucintoro on Ascension Day - Drawing - Pen and brown ink and grey wash, heightened with white (oxidised), over black chalk (some of it drawn with a ruler) - British Museum

 

Canaletto: [ca.1755-60] - A capriccio with a monumental staircase - Drawing - Pen and ink, with grey wash, over ruled and free pencil and pinpointing - Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 907564 - Detail
Canaletto: [ca.1755-60] - A capriccio with a monumental staircase - Drawing - Pen and ink, with grey wash, over ruled and free pencil and pinpointing - Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 907564

 

Canaletto: Five characters from the Commedia dell'Arte on stage, watched from below by a standing audience - Drawing - Pen and brown ink over black chalk
Canaletto: Five characters from the Commedia dell'Arte on stage, watched from below by a standing audience
Drawing - Pen and brown ink over black chalk - size (HxW): 20.6x28.9 cm

 

Canaletto: [After 1717] - A Venetian Interior, with a Young Man Seated by the Fire - Drawing - Pen and black ink, gray wash - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Canaletto: A crowd of spectators watching an acrobat - Drawing - Black lead, pen and brown ink, fragmentary watermark trefoil - Private Collection, Switzerland
Canaletto: [before 1726-28] - Figure studies - Painting on cardboard - Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Verein, Berlin
Canaletto: Figure studies - Frontal view of a worker with sort of an apron - Sketch - Pen on white paper and bistre - Private Collection - Sir Robert Witt
Canaletto: [1765-66] - Ascension Day Festival at Venice - Drawing - Pen and brown ink with gray wash over traces of graphite, tip of the brush with black wash, heightened with a few touches of white gouache (laid on thick eighteenth-century paper) - National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC - Detail
Canaletto: Uomini che giocano a carte e studio di barche - Drawing - Charcoal, pen and ink on watermark paper with a volatile
Canaletto: Figure Studies - Sketch - Schlossmuseum, Weimar
Canaletto: Figure studies - Drawing - Brown pen over preliminary drawing in gray pencil and black-grey pen over gray pencil on paper - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Canaletto: Standing Man and Two Studies of His Head - Drawing - Vertical ruled line in lead or graphite at center, standing men and study of profile head in pen and brown ink, over traces of graphite or lead - study of head in graphite - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Verso
Canaletto: Figure studies and boats - Drawing - Brown pen over traces of preliminary drawing in gray and grey-black pen over preliminary drawing in gray pencil - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Canaletto: [ca. 1740] - A Market Scene - Drawing - Pen and brown ink, grey wash (some additional) - The J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Canaletto: Studi di figure (Figures studies) - Oil on paper - Private Collection
Canaletto: Figure studies - Back view of man with tricorno and tabarro - Sketch - Pen on white paper and bistre - Private Collection - Sir Robert Witt
Canaletto: Figure studies - Painting on cardboard - Private Collection
Canaletto: [ca. 1760] - A festival gondola - Drawing - Leadpoint - The Morgan Library & Museum, New York - Enhanced version
Canaletto: [ca. 1745] - Venice - Piazza San Marco, looking north-east from the Procuratie Nuove - Drawing - Pen and ink, with bluish-grey wash, over free and ruled pencil and pinpointing - Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 907427 - Detail
Canaletto: Man Smoking a Pipe - Drawing - Pen and brown ink, over traces of lead or graphite - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Canaletto: [ca. 1720-50] - Masked Figure Studies - Drawing - Pen and Ink with Pencil - Carnegie Museum of Art

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