Canaletto - A Venetian's View

The exhibition will celebrate the wonderful work of Canaletto, featuring stunning paintings on loan from the Woburn Abbey Collection together with artworks from Worcester’s Fine Art Collection and loans from Birmingham Museums, Tate and Compton Verney.

Born in Venice, Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697 – 1768), commonly known as Canaletto, was an important member of the 18th century Venetian school. He became very popular with English collectors, and visited England repeatedly between 1746 – 56. Canaletto revolutionised the use of colour, ground and canvas and pioneered the technique of painting from life, sitting in front of the subject outdoors as opposed to his contemporaries who completed paintings in the studio. This exhibition explores Canaletto’s work and the impact he had on the generations of artists who followed him. It is extremely rare for this hugely significant collection to leave Woburn Abbey, and this will be the first time the paintings will be united with other examples of Canaletto’s work from Birmingham Museums and Compton Verney. The paintings on display comprise the largest set of paintings Canaletto produced for a single patron, the fourth Duke of Bedford who commissioned the works in the 1730s. They are considered the absolute best of Canaletto’s paintings of Venice. The exhibition is being described as the most ambitious in the history of Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum.