Lot 2128 D α

The artist has positioned himself to include some of the city's most famous landmarks. In the distance, we see the sun setting behind the domes of Santa Maria della Salute, next to which are the Punta della Dogana and the entrance to the Grand Canal. On the right, along the Riva degli Schiavoni, is the Doge's Palace; on the Molo, at the entrance to Piazzetta San Marco, are the columns of Marco and Todaro, behind which we see the Biblioteca Marciana.
This painting, created in 1839, can be counted among Nerly's early Venice vedutas. The artist moved to Venice in 1835 and there became one of the most fashionable vedutists of his generation, gaining a reputation as one of the most important German landscape painters on the international market. Nerly's use of a warm colour palette as a counterpoint to dramatic shadows casts an atmospheric haze over his canvases - an effect reminiscent of the works of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), who was an important inspiration for Nerly.
Nerly was born Friedrich Nerlich in Erfurt in 1807 and met the artist, writer and patron Baron Carl Friedrich von Rumohr (1785-1843) in 1823, who recognised the young artist's talent and made him his protégé. Nerly travelled to Italy with von Rumohr in 1828 and it was on this trip that he made the fateful decision to spend the rest of his life there - and to Italianise his name from Nerlich to Nerly. He continued his studies in Rome for six years before moving to Venice in 1835, where he set up his studio in the Palazzo Pisani near the Campo Santo Stefano, which was a favourite meeting place for Venetians. Nerly's work is an homage to the land and city he chose as his home, and his reverence for Venice shines through in his golden palette.