(Venice 1712–1793)
Capriccio landscape with a lagoon by moonlight,
oil on canvas, 20 x 27 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

This small, unpublished canvas represents an addition to the corpus of capriccio paintings by the Venetian artist Francesco Guardi. The work represents a nocturnal landscape, a particularly rare subject in the painter’s production. Tall trees frame the scene to the left, while on the strip of land in the centre foreground there is a family of fishermen near a shelter. In the background there are several sailing boats and a group of houses with a tall tower on the right. The low moon forms the focal point of the composition: lightly veiled by clouds, it occupies a central position and is the painting’s only source of light.

Francesco Guardi belonged to a noble family from Trento. He began his apprenticeship in Venice in the studio of his elder brother Antonio. In the 1760s, at the death of his brother, he inherited their studio. It is at around this time, when Francesco was already a mature artist, that his first endeavours as a vedutista began. They were certainly influenced by the models of his famous countryman, Canaletto. However, he was also a painter of histories, everyday Venetian life, portraits, flowers, and of invented landscapes and capricci. The later two genres he frequently conceived of in groups, and in this way appealed to the expressly decorative taste of the era. Indeed, they can be seen in the typical interiors depicted by Pietro Longhi, and in various other representations of Venetian salotti of the time. Guardi’s production of capricci were paintings that for the most part are small in scale and characterised by an improvised nature where real elements are depicted by the artist within a fantastical context . Their production spanned his entire career, however from the 1770s he intensified his output of this genre. During his later years, he favoured the imaginary escapism that these compositions offered over the documentary nature of the true veduta. The primary models for his work in this vein can be found in those of his predecessors including his brother Antonio, Marco Ricci, Luca Carlevarjs, Michele Marieschi and Canaletto. Adding to their achievements, Guardi was able to introduce his own idiomatic stylistic interpretation, characterised by a vibrant and fluid brushstroke. This is apparent in the present nocturnal capriccio where all of the elements appear rapidly sketched, with swift touches of colour, dominated by blues and greens, which contribute to creating a singularly pre-romantic, sentimental atmosphere.

In 1973 Antonio Morassi published a drawing, entitled Paesaggio campestre con grandi alberi e un lago (see: A. Morassi, Guardi. I disegni, Milan 1984, vol. III, cat. 651 and fig. 626). This drawing (which is in a private collection in Providence, Rhode Island), and the unpublished present painting correspond in the details of landscape and staffage. However, the drawing, which measures 302 x 464 mm, is significantly larger than the present painting – it is therefore perhaps less certain if it was made in preparation for this small oil painting, or as a recordo after its unusual composition. On the verso of the drawing, is another study for Three Putti, which Morassi connected to two further drawings of putti connected to a rococo ceiling decoration, which he dates to the last decade of Francesco Guardi’s activity (see: A. Morassi, op. cit., cat. no. 456 and 457). Consequently, the present painting, like the idyllic landscape drawing on the recto, should be dated to the 1780s.