Giudecca Canal, Venice, 1897

Provenance

Private collection
Adelson Galleries, New York, New York, acquired from above

Related Works

Grey Day on the Charles, oil on canvas, 18 x 22 inches, signed lower right: John Leslie Breck /–1894–; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia

Note

This work depicts a view of the Giudecca Canal in Venice, one of the city’s main waterways. Venice has long been a beloved destination for both European and American artists, inspiring countless painters—Breck among them. He visited Venice between late 1896 and early 1897, during which time he produced a significant number of oil paintings. Many of these works were later included in memorial exhibitions of Breck’s oeuvre, and it is likely that this painting appeared in one such exhibition under a different title.

On one of his memorial exhibitions in Boston, a critic once wrote the following about Breck’s Venetian paintings: “In the Venetian pictures, the tender appreciation of the man for subtle phases is most marked… These Venetian studies, full of light and color, mist and nature, unconsciously brought out his subtler work, and his most moving efforts were born from rendering those fleeting effects that linger in the memory like minor music.”1