All language subtitles for ITV.Great.Art.1of5.Canaletto.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years, we've been
filming the biggest exhibitions

in the world about some of the
greatest artists and art in history.

Not only did we record
these landmark shows,

but we also secured privileged access
behind the scenes

of the galleries
and museums concerned.

We then used the exhibition
as a springboard

to take a broader look
at these artists.

In this film,
we focus on the 2017 exhibition

at The Queen's Gallery,
Buckingham Palace, London.

The Queen's Gallery is where the
Royal Collection can hold exhibitions

drawn from its treasure troves
of more than a million artworks.

Among its jewels
is a unique collection
of 18th-century Venetian art,

including an unrivalled number
of Canalettos.

Giovanni Antonio Canal
is a remarkable artist

living at a remarkable time
in a remarkable city.

Known as Canaletto, it's perhaps
his paintings above all others

that have created our idea of Venice.

But he's often misunderstood
or underappreciated.

Too often he's seen out of context,

and the artistic production
of Venice at this time

was striking and influential,
and few know the story

behind why so many of his works
ended up in Britain.

This exhibition, and thus this film,
seek to rectify that.

ROSIE RAZZALL: We're in the Queen's
Gallery at Buckingham Palace,

and this is the display space

where the Royal Collection
can be seen by the public.

The Royal Collection is spread
across many royal residences.

Paintings can be seen on display at
Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle,

but also at Hampton Court,
Kew Palace or Kensington Palace.

The Royal Collection is the art
collection that's been accumulated

and collected by many successive
generations of monarchs,

and it includes paintings,
drawings, prints and decorative arts.

The Royal Collection is now held
in trust by Her Majesty the Queen,

and it's here that the public can
come to see parts of the Collection.

LUCY WHITAKER: The Royal Collection
has the largest assemblage of works

by Canaletto in the world.

It has major paintings,
drawings and etchings.

So one of the things we can show

is not only the range of works
by Canaletto,

but also the way in which he moved
in his creative process

from drawing to the final painting.

With this exhibition, all the works
were originally assembled

by the collector
Consul Joseph Smith,

an Englishman
who was living in Venice,

and who sold his entire collection
to George III in 1762.

Smith not only collected works
by Canaletto,

but also by the other artists
working at the same time in Venice.

These artists included
Sebastiano Ricci,

Marco Ricci, Rosalba Carriera,

Luca Carlevarijs, Zuccarelli,
Piazzetta, and others.

This gives us a unique opportunity

not only to show a large body
of Canaletto's works

in the Queen's Gallery, but also
to examine and put into context

some of Venice's most influential
artists of the 18th century.

LORENZO PERICOLO: The first time
when I visited the exhibition,

I was particularly struck
by the variety

of Canaletto's er
visual intelligence.

The quality of his draughtsmanship,
it varies immensely,

and there is a sort of continuous
balancing between optical accuracy,

geometrical er layout,

and then visual impression and
transformation of the optical data.

And then the ways in which
the paintings are composed,

they always show different aspects
of Canaletto's invention,

to the point that you can feel,
or you can follow,

Canaletto
thinking not only about Venice,

but thinking about architecture,

thinking about the difficult
sometimes history of Italy,

and how this architecture
is an important part of what Venice,

the Veneto, Italy was for Canaletto
and his contemporaries.

ROSIE RAZZALL: Canaletto has defined
the image of Venice to the British

to such an extent
that it's easy to forget

that he was actually working
in a much broader cultural sphere.

So by reuniting
Canaletto's paintings

with works
by other Venetian artists,

we get a much fuller picture

of the cultural and social life
of the city in that period,

and also some of the undercurrents

that were influencing Canaletto
at this time.

So the interest in Palladian
architecture, for example,

which was of great interest
to Joseph Smith

and to other scholars and collectors
in Venice and in Britain.

The capriccio,
which was a genre of painting

that was particularly taken up
by Venetian artists,

involving the combination of reality
and elements from the imagination.

And so we see a much, much broader
picture of the life of Venice

through this lens
of the collection of Joseph Smith.

You had huge numbers of British
grand tourists travelling to Venice

and enjoying the pleasures
that it had to offer,

not only the annual carnival,

which took place in the period
between St Stephen's Day

on 26th December
and the beginning of Lent,

which was when people would wear
masks and carnival costume.

You had lots of annual festivals
that were celebrated in the city.

Venice was also a thriving centre
for the opera.

Erm... There were 17 opera houses in
the city by the end of the century.

(VIVALDI'S 'TU M'OFFEDNI' PLAYING)

# Tu m'offendi

# Tu m'offendi, ma non rendi

# Meno forte, e meno amante

# Il costante

(VOCALISING CONTINUES)

# Mio fraterno dolce amor #

There were two particular places in
Venice which were really important.

One was the area around San Marco,

which was the political
and religious life of Venice.

And the other was the Rialto,

which is geographically the
narrowest point of the Grand Canal,

and where it was obvious
to build a bridge.

And around this bridge grew up
the major trading offices

of erm the Venetians, but also
of foreigners working in Venice -

for example, the Turks
and the Germans, and er so on.

Its power was in trade,

and importing and exporting goods
from the East to the West.

ROSEMARY SWEET: Venice had
an extraordinary reputation

from the medieval period onwards.

For a start,
it's an extraordinary city,

the fact that it is in the sea -
it's an island in the sea.

But it was one of the wealthiest

and most popular cities
of the medieval period

and had this extraordinary trade
with the East.

So this was the emporium
where all the luxuries

and exotic goods from the East
came through.

So the erm velvets, the spices,

the silks which were imported
into Britain, these come from Venice.

So from the medieval period,

Venice has been associated
in people's imaginations

with ideas of luxury,
with ideas of the exotic.

And it's been extremely powerful,
that it...

Because it was so wealthy,
it was a real player

in European power politics,

and formed alliances
with other European states.

This is the era when Italy
was composed of city states

and small principalities.

And so, because of its wealth,
it was a mover and shaker

and played a very important part
in the Crusades, for example.

And Venice seemed to offer an example
of what was regarded by Aristotle

as the best form of government -
mixed government.

That is it combines monarchy
in the person of a doge,

with the aristocracy in the Senate
and the people in the Grand Council,

and that this system
of checks and balances

ensured that no...power
didn't become despotic,

and that there wasn't any danger
of popular uprising,

and that therefore these checks
and balances provided the stability.

This is an erm commercial republic

that Britain feels
it can identify with.

It has the kind of balance of power

that many people in Britain
were aspiring to.

It was resisting the papacy, and so
they see a lot of similarities.

So particularly
in the late-17th century,

there was a lot
of political interest in Venice

as offering a model of government.

Canaletto was baptised
Antonio da Canal

in the parish of San Lio
in Venice in 1697.

His father was Bernardo Canal,
a stage painter.

Canaletto must have begun his work
training in his father's studio,

where he would have learned
the skills of perspective -

these skills very important
in theatrical stage designs.

His name appears in the libretti

for some operas in Venice
by Vivaldi and Orlandini.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: The Canal family

were I think what we would call
upper-middle-class.

Unlike some of Canaletto's rivals,
for instance, who came from the...

often from the sort of the lowest
echelons of Venetian society.

Canaletto did fancy himself
as slightly grand.

And there is a da Canal coat of arms,
which, in fact,

he uses as a signature
in the later stages of his career.

He's obviously rather sort of proud

of coming from a family
that has a coat of arms.

I imagine him as being
rather gentlemanly,

solitary, and quite possibly
a bit difficult.

Canaletto ended up supporting
all three of his sisters,

and was clearly kind to them
and good at being supportive.

And we think that he was born
in a small courtyard

in the middle of Venice,
which one can still go and see,

in an upstairs apartment.

We know that he lived there
because he did drawings from it,

two of which survive,
are are particularly fresh

and sort of immediate drawings
done out of his windows.

But we know, really, very little
about his early life at all.

We don't know whether he had
any training from anybody

apart from his father.

The one thing that we are told
is about the key change in 1719-20,

when he goes to Rome with his father

to help him with the design
of theatre sets,

when apparently he was so inspired
by his surroundings

that he decided to draw
and paint them.

He clearly had
a significant natural talent.

ROSIE RAZZALL: What we're looking at
here are two proprietary studies

that Canaletto made for Joseph Smith
erm sometime in the early 1720s,

and erm they're proprietary studies

for the first commission
that Canaletto made for Smith.

And this was for a set
of six monumental paintings

that are also
in the Royal Collection.

We're lucky to be able to show
the proprietary studies,

as well as the paintings
that they were intended for.

And Canaletto would have submitted
these drawings to his patron

to make sure that he approved of his
designs before he carried them out.

They were intended as pairs.

So you can see in the paintings
and in the studies

that the weight of the architecture

is on one side of the sheet
or the other.

The drawings are quite loose
and free in their execution,

especially compared to some of
the other drawings that we have

by Canaletto,
which are very highly finished.

And this is because
they weren't intended

to show the minute details
of the architecture.

They were just to show to Smith erm

as an example of how
his finished paintings might look,

and just to convey the drama
that he intended to put across

in the paintings.

What's really interesting
about Canaletto's paintings

is that it's really clear to see
that he was working on the canvas,

changing his mind as he worked
and painting bits out.

And it's been great
that we've been able to find out

that he was going through the same
working process in his drawings.

In particular,
we've taken an infrared image

of this drawing on the right,

which shows the two columns at
the entrance to the Piazza San Marco.

One is crowned
with the Lion of Saint Mark,

and the other, which we don't see
in the pen-and-ink drawing,

has a statue of Saint Theodosius.

But the infrared image has shown
that actually, in his underdrawing,

Canaletto originally
drew in the column

with the statue of Saint Theodosius
in the right place,

but then worked over the top
with pen and ink,

probably decided that the column
was too much, perhaps,

and decided not to draw it in.

But then, when we go back to the
painting, he's changed his mind again

and he's returned the column to
its correct place in the painting

and painted out the column
on the left,

probably to make the two
work better as a pair.

These paintings were commissioned
for a particular room

in Smith's palazzo
on the Grand Canal,

and they would have been intended
to hang in pairs

in a very dramatic arrangement.

And Canaletto has chosen
the Piazza San Marco,

the area around San Marco,

which is the civic
and religious heart of Venice -

so highly recognisable sites.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: I think what
makes Canaletto a great artist

is his uniquely sensitive
observation of things,

which might be weather
or light effects,

people going about their
daily business, how dogs behave.

I've always been a particular fan
of Canaletto's depiction of dogs.

I'm sure he was
a great lover of dogs.

Erm... Each one is different, and
each one has a different character.

I mean, it probably derives
ultimately from Dutch painting,

but it's entirely new
in Venetian painting in the 1720s.

ROSIE RAZZALL:
What we're looking at here

is one of Canaletto's
only-surviving sketchbooks.

It's in the Accademia in Venice,
and it's a fascinating document,

because it shows us
Canaletto's first response

to the city that he saw around him.

He would have carried it with him
around Venice,

making notes into it
of the facades of the buildings,

mainly sequences on the Grand Canal
in this sketchbook.

And it dates to around the 1720s,

so around about the time that he was
first starting to make view paintings

and to sell them to patrons.

This page, for example, shows...

Here is the Ca' Rezzonico
on the left,

which was then known as the Ca' Bon.

Erm... And it's a sequence
moving across to the Ca' Foscari.

But you get a sense of how Canaletto
was using the pages of the...

of the sketchbook to record the view.

So he continues this sequence here,
the edge of the Ca' Foscari here,

and then he's moved down the canal,
further down,

and so the Ca' Foscari
is now much larger.

So he redraws again
the facade of that building

and continues the sequence.

The Palazzo Balbi, which was the last
building on the previous page,

continues here, and so the sequence
continues through the book.

And he's also annotated it
with...with his notes.

So we've got buildings labelled,
like the Ca' Bon and the Ca' Foscari,

but we've also got little notes
that are going to help him later

when he's making his paintings.

So 'B' is for 'bianco', or 'white'.

'R' here is for 'rosso', or 'red'.

And then here, 'sporco' is 'dirty',

so he's saying that the facade of the
building is a bit...a bit dirty.

Erm... And you've got erm
splashes of paint.

It's a working document
that he was using

to record his first insights
into the city.

This opening is very unusual,
because it shows boats and figures.

And we've got on the left-hand side

some of the details of the boats
that Canaletto was recording

in front of the Ca' Foscari,

and they're drawn in a very similar
way to the architecture,

so the pen-and-ink,
very simple outlines.

But then, when we move
to his figure studies,

they're drawn with a much greater
flourish - much, much looser.

The interesting thing about the way
that he's during these characters

is that he takes a very similar
approach in his paintings,

where they're painted
with little flicks of the brush.

Here it's little...little squiggles
of black chalk,

and it gives them a real vibrancy
and emotional energy,

which is really going to give
the narrative focus to his paintings.

CLAIRE CHORLEY:
The joy of this painting, for me,

is the strong contrasts.

Er... It's the darks are very dark
and the lights are very bright.

And the contrasts between the way
the architecture's painted,

very formally, and the crowd scene,

you get a lot of highly impasted
little blobs.

So over here, the chicken coops,

the...the hens poking their heads
out of the coops

are completely convincing

with just a few little touches
of impasted paint.

And then the group of the figures
watching the Punch and Judy show.

Here's Mr Punch just appearing
out...out of the curtain.

Canaletto's very good at just
putting a few little blobs on

to make the sunlight
catch the face of the audience.

And what I love about this one

is that instead of just painting
the folds of the fabric

of the back of the puppet booth,

you have really the sense
of somebody's body -

some...someone
or somebody's in there,

pushing out the back of the curtain.

And what's charming
about this painting

is that there's a little fingerprint
here by the artist.

He's just modulated
the...the light paint.

The fingerprint
is definitely the artist.

It's... It's into the wet paint.

Being the most efficient way
of making the right stone texture,

just in that little bit.

You don't get fingerprints happening
very often in his work,

so it's...more charming
and more precious that it's there.

LUCY WHITAKER: One of the very early
accounts of Canaletto's life,

by Zanetti, says that Canaletto
used camera obscura.

In fact, he was able to teach
how to use it well.

So, from that basis,

people have therefore thought that
he must have used a camera obscura.

Today, we are much more sceptical erm

because of the evidence that we
actually show in the exhibition,

erm that all his drawings were very
carefully prepared in the studio.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON:
The camera obscura is a box

with a pinhole in it and a mirror,

which projects an image of,
you know, for instance,

a building in front of the artist
onto a sheet of paper,

which can then be traced.

So it's very useful
for the establishment of erm

of the basics of a composition.

But erm it's no good for detail,

and obviously it cannot be used
except in a static position,

which, in Venice, obviously rules
out its use on any form of water.

GIORGIO TAGLIAFERRO: The 16th century
is considered the golden age

of Venetian art,
and especially Venetian painting,

the most famous painter being Titian.

Other big names, of course,
are Tintoretto, Veronese.

They are leading figures, but they're
just not the only ones, of course.

There was a huge production
of art in general,

and painting more specifically,
over the 16th century,

which will be very influential later,

especially for painters
er working in the 18th century.

Venetian painters were regarded
as the masters of colour,

and they were very influential
even later.

Er... 17th-century,
18th-century painters

looked to Titian
and Veronese especially

as examples of beautiful painting,

and especially the way
they handle colours.

And I think
that there are several factors.

Again, trade, perhaps.

The availability of pigments
you had in Venice was unique,

and even Raphael ordered pigments
from Venice.

In the 16th century,
there is a fascination

for the er sensuality
of Titian's colour, especially.

It's thick, textural,
and extremely charming.

What I believe people are struck by
when they look at a Venetian painting

is precisely this unfathomable effect
that colour has on your sight.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: The exhibition
provides a remarkable opportunity

to see all these fabulous paintings
done for Consul Smith.

Smith is a major figure in Venetian
painting of the 18th century

because he was one of the great
patrons of contemporary artists.

He had, well,
a major collection of old art,

but also bought works

from most of the more interesting
Venetian painters of the day,

which he used, initially,
to decorate his house,

and he had exceptional examples.

LUCY WHITAKER:
Consul Smith had his house

just a few hundred yards
from the Rialto Bridge,

and built up his wealth through
the import and export trade -

particularly fish and wine.

And, of course, Canaletto didn't live
that far away from the Rialto Bridge.

He lived in the San Lio area,

so both patron and artist
were in the same neighbourhood.

ROSEMARY SWEET: Consul Smith,
I think, is extremely interesting

for the way in which he combines
commercial interests

with being a connoisseur
and a dealer in art.

And he's very strategic about this.

Going to Consul Smith
had that added advantage,

that this was a house
that you could freely enter,

and he would make sure
that people were exposed

to the kinds of paintings
that he wanted to sell,

and then he was able to act as the
agent, and make a profit in doing so.

ROSIE RAZZALL: There's a lot
of evidence that Joseph Smith

had much broader interest
than just the commercial side of...

of his dealings with Canaletto.

He was interested in books.
He built up a great library

and was involved in the setting up
of the Pasquali press,

which printed important
enlightenment texts.

Printmaking in Venice

is a very important adjunct
to the marketing of view paintings.

By producing a large series
of engravings of Venetian views,

these engravings disseminated
the compositions of the view painters

to the far ends of Europe.

ROSIE RAZZALL: We're standing
in the print shop of Gianni Basso,

which is in the Cannaregio district
of Venice.

He uses a lot of traditional
printmaking techniques

that would have been used
in the 18th century.

Venice in the 18th century was a
real thriving centre for printmaking

and book production.

Erm... Artists like Canaletto
and Marco Ricci and Tiepolo

took up etching themselves,

but it was also in places like this
where grand tourists

and visitors to Venice

could buy especially reproductions
of Canaletto's paintings.

Perhaps they couldn't afford
to buy an oil painting,

but they could afford
to buy a print.

In 1735, Antonio Visentini
made a set of reproductions

after Canaletto's most important
paintings in Consul Smith's house

on the Grand Canal.

So visitors could consult this
prospectus of prints

and decide which versions they might
commission for their own collection,

or they might simply decide
to acquire the prints

to take back to Britain.

And Joseph Smith
was very interested in printmaking

and print culture in Venice,

and in the 1730s he set up his own
printing press, the Pasquali press.

Erm... He employed Antonio Visentini
as one of its principal draughtsmen,

and lots of the prints
that were made by artists

were then published as sets
through Pasquali.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON:
From the early 1730s onwards,

he could produce
this sort of set of engravings

and say, you know, 'Please just
tell me which numbers you'd like

and, you know,
I'll get them to send them to you.'

The business
was extremely well organised,

because Smith's brother
lived in London.

Paintings would be shipped to London

and delivered to the client
by Smith's brother,

and he would collect the payment.

ROSIE RAZZALL: Both Joseph Smith and
Canaletto were clearly very shrewd,

and they knew their market,

and they knew
that there was a market there

for these views of Venice.

And actually it's interesting,
because Venetian families themselves

were not really interested
in buying his paintings.

It was mainly erm a tourist market
that Canaletto was catering towards.

These Venetian families were instead
commissioning history paintings

or decorative schemes by artists
like Sebastiano Ricci or Tiepolo

to decorate their houses,
because, for them,

they didn't need to have
a painting of Venice

because they could look out
of the window,

whereas British grand tourists
taking these souvenirs home

wanted to hang them
in their country houses,

where they could be reminded
of this great...

this great period in their lives.

MATTHEW HIRST: Woburn Abbey is the
family home of the Dukes of Bedford,

and it has been
in their possession since 1547,

when it was gifted in the will
of Henry VIII to Sir John Russell,

who later became
the first Earl of Bedford.

The fourth Duke of Bedford,

who purchased the 24 views
by Canaletto of Venice

that are in the collection
here at Woburn

acquired them on his grand tour
in 1731.

We know that he was in Venice.

And at that time
he was Lord John Russell.

He hadn't inherited the title
from his brother.

He became the duke in 1733,

and we know that he went back
to Venice again in 1736.

The fourth Duke of Bedford
would have been a very young man

when he arrived in Venice.
He was 21 years old,

so he would have started his
grand tour probably when he was 19.

And he would have been conscious
that, as part of that tour,

he was acquiring works of art

which would have effectively
given a sense of his own taste,

so that when he got home he could
use them to decorate his home

and be able to show his er companions
and his contemporaries

that he'd been on a grand tour -

he'd seen these things first-hand,
for himself,

and that he was clearly,
as a consequence, an educated man.

ROSEMARY SWEET:
The grand tour is a journey

that was generally undertaken by
young men during the 18th century.

And that's the way in which
historians usually use it.

It's this idea of young men
who have left school,

might have left university.

They'll be
in their mid-to-late teens,

and they're sent off
by their parents

on an extended tour of Europe.

But a lot of it's about acquiring
the social skills

and the sort of political know-how,

and ideas of taste and culture

that will enable them to fulfil
a position when they come back home.

So, for example, Rome, it was
always good to be there at Easter,

because that's when you had
the ceremonies of Easter.

There was the washing of the feet
on Maundy Thursday,

and then the great Mass
on Easter Sunday.

And then go south to Naples
for the period of Lent,

because there was more going on
in Naples

and the climate
was that much warmer.

And then the great thing was to be
in Venice for Ascension-tide,

which was when you had
the ceremony of Sposalizio.

And so you would go up north again
for Ascension,

which, depending on when Easter was,
would probably be sometime in May.

(DRUM BEATING)

(DRUMMING CONTINUES)

(HORNS JOIN)

(MAN SPEAKING IN ITALIAN
OVER LOUDSPEAKER)

(MAN YELLS)

LUCY WHITAKER: In the 12th century,
the pope gave the doge a gold ring

and the right to marry the sea,

as a sign of his lordship over it.

Ascension Day is very important
for the Venetians,

because it is the day that they
celebrate the Marriage of the Sea.

This painting shows the occasion
of the Marriage of the Sea,

but what we see here
is that the Bucentauro,

which was the doge's
ceremonial galley,

has returned from the ceremony
and is about to dock.

We have an open view of the figures.

We have them arranged on two decks.

So the most senior - the procurators
and senators in red at the top,

with the doge.

And then, below -
just a little bit below -

on the next open deck
you have the nobility in black.

So you have this wonderful reflection
of the society of Venice

in the Bucentauro.

You see onlookers everywhere.
They're right up the Campanile.

At the very top
there are figures seated,

with their feet very perilously
over the edge, watching.

And at the corner you see one man
with a telescope to his eyes,

keeping a watch on what's going on.

It's very typical of Canaletto,
the way in which he crops a view

so that boats seem to continue
out of it.

And this gives the sense that you're
actually standing there,

perhaps taking a photograph,

and that the whole ceremony
is continuing all around you.

But, of course the most important
thing about this and about Canaletto

is that when he painted light,
it's with this absolute clarity.

So we have spring light here,
which is clear and wonderful,

and the light er filters through
all the gondolas.

You see reflected light
and sunlight interchanging

as your eye goes over the painting.

Everything that's important
is in that view.

It summarises Venice completely.

ROSIE RAZZALL: In the 1740s
the War of Austrian Succession

interrupted the flow of visitors
to Venice,

and so there were not only
fewer tourists coming to the city,

but it was also more difficult
to ship paintings back to Britain,

and so Canaletto was short of work.

Joseph Smith helped him at this time
by giving him two major commissions.

The first for a series
of five paintings of Roman views

that were finished in 1742,

and the second
for a series of overdoor paintings

that declared Smith's allegiance
to Palladianism in architecture.

But this wasn't really enough work,

and so in 1746 Canaletto
decided to travel to London.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON: For an artist
who made a living as a view painter,

I think he showed
a remarkable reluctance to travel.

I mean, there's a note
by a contemporary that, you know,

'Why would Canaletto
bother to come to England?

Everybody who wants a painting by him
has got one already.'

It's around this time that, in fact,
the whole family disperses.

I mean,
the two nephews both leave Venice

and go and live abroad as well.

But I think also an important element

is that I think that he himself
had quite simply got bored.

He had spent the whole of the 1730s
painting views of Venice,

and in the 1740s
he shows every sign of agitation,

and he starts doing
all sorts of different things.

He starts doing capriccio again,

he takes up printmaking.

I see the move to England in 1746
as part of this restlessness.

I think he wants a new challenge.

ROSIE RAZZALL: And he refigured
the River Thames

as if it were the Grand Canal,
showing London as if it were Venice.

And he was received in Britain
with mixed success,

but he did have a great influence
on topographical artists

working in the city.

And then, in 1755,
he decided to come back to Venice,

where he remained
for the rest of his life.

In the same year, 1755,

Joseph Smith published
the catalogue of his library,

the Bibliotheca Smithiana,

that was published
by his own Pasquali press.

And this listed the contents
of his significant library -

his books, manuscripts,
prints and albums of drawings -

and this was with the intention
of finding a prestigious buyer.

LUCY WHITAKER: The young George III,
who was Prince of Wales at the time,

had advisers and agents in Italy

seeking out works of art
and books for his collection,

because of his interest
in the visual arts.

Close advisers to him heard that
Smith's library was er for sale,

and negotiations were opened,

and it was suggested
that he might like to buy the library

for the sum of £10,000.

The Seven Years' War intervened,
which interrupted negotiations.

They resumed in the spring of 1762,
and by that stage

Smith had offered to sell
not only the library

but also his entire collection
of paintings, gems and books.

So the total of that would have been
about 500 paintings,

and around 1,500 volumes.

By the end of 1762
the sale was finalised,

but now for a sum of £20,000,
which was sold to George III,

who had come to the throne in 1760.

At the same time,
George III bought Buckingham House -

now Buckingham Palace -

which he wanted to have
as a private residence

for him and his growing family.

So it was, in a way,

a very happy coincidence
that these paintings arrived.

ROSIE RAZZALL:
After his return from Britain,

Canaletto carried on working
in Venice,

making many drawings
and paintings of the city,

and he was finally accepted
to the Venetian Academy in 1763.

But we don't know a lot about his
personal life. He never married,

and he seems to have been
a relatively solitary figure

towards the end of his life.

Canaletto died in 1768
after an illness of five days,

in which his symptom was described
as 'inflammation of the bladder',

and he's buried in the same church
in San Lio in which he was baptised.

CHARLES BEDDINGTON:
Canaletto was not the wealthy man

at the time of his death
that one would expect him to be.

We have an inventory of his
possessions made after he died,

which includes, as one would expect,
a number of unfinished

or unworked canvases,
but remarkably little else.

Since Consul Smith, you know,
ended up as a very rich man indeed

and Canaletto very much didn't,

erm he may be an early example

of an artist who was very much
exploited by his dealer.

LUCY WHITAKER: I think Canaletto is,
first and foremost,

a great topographical artist.

He could record what he saw
and observe with absolute precision.

But I think, on top of that,
he could take reality

and create something imaginary
and ideal and poetic

from the ordinary and the actual.

And I think he did that through
his incredible expertise with paint.

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