Hull – Ferens Art Gallery (A View on the Grand Canal by Antonio Canaletto)

I looked across one of the gallery rooms and thought how much clarity this painting had and how much like a Canaletto it was, one of my favourite painters. I didn’t think the Ferens would have an artwork by this artist, so this was all rather lovely when I realised it looked like a Canaletto because it was painted by Canaletto….. It’s of the Grand Canal in Venice, one of many artworks painted of this stretch of canal by Canaletto.

The painting was gifted to the gallery by Muriel Thetis Warde in 1964, the youngest daughter of a Hull shipping magnate, and was originally painted between 1725 and 1730. The gallery says that this is “one of the few undoubted Canaletto’s in an English municipal collection”, although it was previously thought to be by Francesco Guardi, so that lack of doubt is a relatively recent thing. Anyway, very lovely and my favourite artwork in the gallery.