In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici started collecting self-portraits of painters. This collection has grown to include over two thousand paintings, sculptures and drawings, and is now part of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy. During the eighteenth century, as painting interiors was developing as a genre, some artists took to painting not just themselves, but their studio as well. Here’s a selection of those.

The American artist John Ferguson Weir’s first major painting was An Artist’s Studio from 1864, in which the artist in question is his father, not himself. It has the air of meticulous veracity, and was exhibited, sold, and brought the painter’s election as an associate of the National Academy.

Paul Cézanne’s roughly painted Stove in the Studio from about 1865 includes the two most important items, the stove to provide heat, and a canvas to provide a painting surface.

Frédéric Bazille’s broad view of his Studio on the Rue La Condamine, from 1869-70, reveals the wide open space that he shared with Renoir at the time. The artist stands at the centre, next to his easel with his View of the Village in progress. Manet painted himself standing in front of Bazille, with a hat and beard.

In 1878, the American artist William Merritt Chase rented the main gallery in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. For the next seventeen years this was to be his place of work, public image, extended persona, private stage, personal gallery, and the motif for at least a dozen of his paintings.

The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, had been completed in 1857, was demolished in 1956, and was one of the first in America to be designed specifically for visual artists. Notable previous occupants include Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt. When Chase moved in, the building was owned by John Taylor Johnston, who later became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted just the year after he moved in, Chase’s Studio Interior (c 1879) is one of his few paintings of studios lacking figures, but shows off his ornately carved wooden chest, a copy of an Old Master, and some of his more exotic props. Chase was quick to recognise the promotional value of his studio: as it grew steadily more exotic, and more populated with his own work, he encouraged the press to write about it, to promote his image as a successful artist.

His Tenth Street Studio from 1880 shows one of his portraiture clients, engaged in discussion with a painter who could be Chase, but recedes into the shadows. At the woman’s feet is an elegant dog, and she is surrounded by intriguing and tasteful objects.

In his Studio Interior (c 1882), another fashionably dressed young woman is glancing through a huge bound collation of Chase’s work, sat by an even grander carved wooden sideboard, decorated with almost outlandish objects including a model ship, a lute, and sundry objets d’art.

A Corner of My Studio (c 1895) is a more formal and finished record of Chase’s studio in its final year. Through the curtained doorway, we see in the distance one of Chase’s students painting diligently.

William McGregor Paxton’s open fire In the Studio (1905) is appropriately classy, glowing in the background. He deliberately defocussed it in what he termed Vermeer’s “binocular vision”. His model is in crisp focus, and as the eye wonders further away from her as the optical centre of the painting, edges and details become progressively more blurred.

Olga Boznańska, the Polish Impressionist, painted this uncomplicated Interior of the artist’s studio in Krakow in 1906.

When Carl Larsson painted his Self-Portrait in his new studio in 1912, he sits back with the ease of a successful artist in his late fities. Around him are the creature comforts furnished by that success, and designed by his wife. There are some gentle touches of eccentricity, like the sword passing through the huge book open in front of him, and the statue whose feet are propping the book up.

Few cities in Europe have been painted as much as Venice, with its distinctive canals and other waterways. First popularised by Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), better known as Canaletto, a native of the city whose vedute (views) sold so well to rich tourists undertaking their Grand Tours during the eighteenth century, they had faded by the start of the nineteenth.

In this series of four articles, I show how they were revived in the paintings of visiting artists, and played important roles in the development of twentieth century art. We start today with an English painter who was only twenty-three years old, and was to die within two years: Richard Parkes Bonington.

On the Grand Canal (1826) is a brilliant plein air oil sketch painted from a boat, showing the entrance to the Grand Canal, which snakes its way through the centre of the city. Bonington has removed one of the palazzi, but otherwise appears faithful to the motif.

Riva degli Schiavoni, from near S. Biagio (c 1827) shows the San Marco basin from the Arsenal traghetto, near the south-eastern entrance to the Grand Canal. Although only a small watercolour, Noon considers it was painted well after Bonington’s return from Italy.

Ducal Palace with a Religious Procession (1827) was apparently painted in late 1827 for James Carpenter, from graphite studies Bonington had made during his visit in 1826. Painted on a white ground, it unfortunately underwent severe shrinkage, and was extensively retouched as a result. However, it was generally very well received at the time, despite the liberties taken with its representation of the view.

Grand Canal, the Rialto in the Distance – Sunrise (1828) is one of Bonington’s finest oil paintings, made in the studio from graphite and other sketches from 1826. This painting has quite commonly been described as showing sunset, but as the view faces almost due east, must have been set in the early morning.

The Grand Canal Looking Toward the Rialto (1826), painted on millboard, may have been started en plein air, but appears to have been completed later in the studio, when Bonington had returned to Paris, which may account for the difference in hues in the sky. By the summer of 1828, Bonington was back in London, where he died of tuberculosis at the age of only twenty-five.

Between 1838-1848, the English traveller, writer and painter Edward Lear lived in Rome, making occasional visits to Britain. This quick plein air watercolour sketch of Venice, the Doge’s Palace is undated, but may well have been painted during this period.

JMW Turner paid many visits to Venice, where he painted some of his most radical landscapes.

Although Turner wasn’t particularly consistent in his reflections, at his most faithful he remains accurate in this famous view of Campo Santo, Venice from 1842, where reflected sails appear angelic in form.

Turner’s clouds and buildings in The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa, from the same year, have a similar softness in form typical of his later oil paintings.

John Ferguson Weir visited the city in 1868, following which he painted The Grand Canal, Venice (1869) in the studio, probably when he was back in the USA in the autumn of the following year.

Next Sunday, I’ll show paintings from the closing years of the nineteenth century, when Venice became even more popular.