Gondola prows in the foreground, the Piazzetta pale beyond

Two gondolas fill the bottom of the sheet, their grey and blue prows cut off by the edge and their mooring poles rising through the picture in warm brown. Beyond them a rank of black hulls lies against the quay, and the Piazzetta runs back in pale washes — a tall column at the left, the domes and pinnacles of the basilica behind it, and the arcaded palace front in cream and apricot with dark arch shadows. Small figures in blue and white move along the waterfront. The water is worked in short strokes of teal and white.

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was the leading portrait painter of his generation, born in Florence to American parents and trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran. The scandal of Madame X drove him to London in 1884, where he painted the aristocracy and the great merchant families for two decades before abandoning commissioned portraiture in 1907 for watercolour, landscape and mural work. He travelled constantly — Venice, the Alps, Spain, the Middle East, Florida — painting in oil and watercolour with a bravura touch that was widely imitated and never matched. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Tate and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.