In the early years of the twentieth century, the city of Venice grew in importance as a centre of art, with the Venice Biennale increasingly encouraging contemporary styles. That drew a succession of Post-Impressionists to depict the city and its famous canals.

Henri-Edmond Cross’s watercolour sketch of Venice – The Giudecca from 1903 is similar in approach to those painted by Paul Signac before he viewed Paul Cézanne’s late watercolours in 1908.

Cross’s Regatta in Venice from 1903-04 is a finished Pointillist painting in oils, bearing a strong similarity to those painted at this time by Paul Signac. In the middle distance there appears to be a race taking place.

Paul Signac’s fascination with Venice had been inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, in particular The Stones of Venice. In the course of the early years of the twentieth century, he turned his large collection of studies made in front of the motif into a succession of major Neo-Impressionist oil paintings. Among the first, which he completed in 1904, was this view of the Giudecca Anchorage showing the church of Santa Maria della Salute. This set the compositional approach for many of his views of ports, with colourful vessels in the foreground, and lofty buildings dissolving in the distance.

Another example from 1904 is Signac’s painting of The Lagoon. Yellow Sail with its rhythmic reflections.

Signac’s The Green Sail (1904) features the church of San Giorgio in the distance.

Meanwhile, John Singer Sargent found more unusual views of activities and parts of the city not normally seen by the visitor. This watercolour from 1904 shows Unloading Boats in Venice in the city’s port.

Basin of San Marco, Venice, completed by Signac in 1905, is one of the largest of his paintings of ports. This shows, at the left, San Giorgio Maggiore, in the centre Santa Maria della Salute, and to the right the Doges’ Palace and the Campanile of Piazza San Marco. In the foreground is a flotilla of bragozzi with their colourful sails. Signac’s preparations for this had been careful if not painstaking. They led from his watercolour sketches to a squared drawing with formal geometry and a planned colour scheme, which he then enlarged onto the canvas. He was clearly pleased with the result, and this work was featured in many of his subsequent major exhibitions.

My favourite among Signac’s views of Venice is his Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice (1905). Its foreground is dominated by a shimmering and jumbled parade of gondolas, and melting into the distance is the towering silhouette of Santa Maria della Salute.

Sargent’s bravura watercolour sketch Grand Canal, Venice (1907) gives an idea as to his approach and style. It’s composed of a sparse collection of brushstrokes of watercolour which assemble into a detailed view. He sees Venice from the level of a gondola, the bows of which are also shown. His palette for these sketches is generally centred on earth colours for the buildings, with blue for the sky, water, and usually the shadows too.

In 1908, Ivan Trush visited northern Italy, where he painted this famous view of Venice, San Giorgio Maggiore. One of the smaller islands there, it has been painted extensively, perhaps most famously in Claude Monet’s late series. The church and its high campanile are prominent landmarks whose detail Trush has captured in this impressive oil sketch.

Signac painted Venice. Customs House in 1908, following a return visit to the city. This reverses his previous compositions by placing the Customs House in the mid-ground, with masts and sails behind. This loses the depth and grandeur of those earlier works.

Martín Rico maintained his summer visits to Venice right up to the year of his death, when he painted this unusual view Near the Grand Canal, Venice (1908). A person is in the water beside the gondola, and the boatman is assisting them with a boathook while the other occupants seem quite detached from what is going on.

Sargent’s watercolours were by no means dependent on the sophistication of his technique: Rio dei Mendicanti, Venice from about 1909 works its magic almost entirely from a combination of wet on dry and wet on wet. There isn’t even much in the way of a graphite drawing under its thin washes.

Although the rise of Modernism brought fewer painters to the canals of Venice, they increasingly flocked to the Venice Biennale during the twentieth century, and Venice remains a focus of art.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the city of Venice had become established as an essential visit for every aspiring landscape artist. It not only attracted those painting traditional views (vedute) of its canals, but was drawing those in the avant-garde. This was encouraged by the start of the city’s biennial art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, the first of which opened on 30 April 1895.

The American Post-Impressionist Maurice Brazil Prendergast had a particular affection for the city, which he visited in 1898. The Canal, Venice from 1898-99 shows Riva di San Severo, and makes good comparison with Sargent’s looser watercolours of the canals, such as his Scuola di San Rocco from about 1903, shown later in this article.

Henri-Edmond Cross’s A Canal in Venice is also dated from 1899, and is an unusual Pointillist oil sketch of gondolas in one of the city’s smaller canals. Cross visited the city at this time, and again in 1903 and 1908.

The young Roger Fry, who was to become an influential critic and promoter of Post-Impressionism, went to Venice in 1899 to learn to paint. His early works, including this view of Venice, appear realist with Impressionist tendencies.

Martín Rico was still visiting Venice each summer. Some of his later paintings of the city are more populous and bustling, such as his San Lorenzo River with the Campanile of San Giorgio dei Greci, Venice from about 1900.

In about 1902, Rico painted this more direct view of the church of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, with a small fleet of gondolas.

The British artist Walter Sickert visited Venice on several occasions between 1894 and 1904. His paintings make interesting comparison with those of John Singer Sargent, who was painting the city mostly in watercolour at the time. Sickert’s oil sketch of Venice, la Salute, thought to have been completed in about 1901, uses muted colours. He has cropped this unusually, showing only a portion of the famous domed church of Santa Maria della Salute. The artist also stressed how he had painted this in “full colour”.

John Singer Sargent visited Venice repeatedly from about 1874, even before he became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and continued to do so after he moved his studio to London in 1886. His watercolour of Rio dell Angelo from 1902 is typically painterly and rich in chroma.

Sargent’s Scuola di San Rocco from about 1903 is one of his best-known watercolours, and another bravura painting.

In 1903, Mykhaylo Berkos visited the city, where he painted this watercolour view of boats On a Canal Near Venice (1903). Although few examples appear to have survived, he was an accomplished and prolific painter in watercolours as well as oils.

Frits Thaulow was an accomplished print-maker, and I think that this version of the Marble Steps (1903) in Venice is an aquatint. It shows the different approach he used to represent the broken water surface and its reflections.

In the early twentieth century, Venice was to become a focus of attention for the more avant-garde, notably Post-Impressionists with Pointillist techniques.

In the first of these two articles showing tents in paintings, I covered those depicting historical battles of the more distant past. Today’s sequel brings those up to date with tents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, starting with one of John Singer Sargent’s works as a war artist in the closing months of the First World War.

Sargent painted several scenes in military medical facilities, including this watercolour of the Interior of a Hospital Tent, with its packed rows of folding camp beds and a multitude of guy ropes visible through its large windows.

During his travels in the Middle East, Alberto Pasini must have become very familiar with the sight of An Arab Camp, shown here at a small watering place in 1866. From the dress and preponderance of horses, this was probably further north into Syria or even Turkey.

Albert Bierstadt’s The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak (1863) was one of his most successful paintings based on the studies from his first visit to the west in 1859. This shows a summit of 3,187 metres (10,456 feet), named by its surveyors after a general who died in the Civil War. The First Nation people shown are Shoshone, seen in their traditional wigwams with their characteristic circular opening.

Nearly fifty years after the event, François-Auguste Biard painted The Duke of Orleans Received in a Lapland Camp, August 1795 (1841). This shows the Duke looking disdainful and detached in a Sami tent, apparently shunning the bowl that is being offered to him. The tent’s framework of poles is clearly visible, and put to good use bearing the weight of the pot and drying furs.

Tents were also popular with explorers and those prospecting for valuable minerals such as gold.

Ludwig Becker painted this watercolour view of his prospector’s tent at Bendigo, in the Australian outback during the early years of its gold rush in 1853, one of several paintings he exhibited in Melbourne the following year. At its height, similar tents and shacks housed forty thousand prospectors, including the artist.

Edward Adrian Wilson’s rough pencil sketch of Camping after Dark (1910) shows a cutaway of a ‘pyramid’ tent in the Antarctic, its three occupants crammed in tightly together. From their tangle of legs and boots to the mittens and balaclava hats hanging to thaw and dry above them, it’s cramped but warm and sheltered. Wilson was one of Captain Scott’s party who died during their return from the South Pole two years later.

Tents had also become popular temporary shelters at fun events across the world.

William Powell Frith’s famous painting of Derby Day (1856-58) shows some of the canvas palaces installed for this horse-racing festival at Epsom, to the south of London. The tent in the left foreground is that of the Reform Club, an exclusive private members club in London, founded in 1836.

One of Émile Friant’s earliest works is this 1881 painting of The Entrance of the Clowns, showing the interior of the Big Top at the moment that the clowns, acrobats, and other entertainers parade. Many circuses relied on these huge tents to contain their spectators around the ring where the entertainers performed.

Pierre Bonnard’s The Beach (Arcachon) from about 1922, shows this beach packed with tents and awnings covering the golden sand, and crowds of people and moored yachts in the distance.

In the summer of 1913, the Danish painter Laurits Andersen Ring and his family holidayed in their caravan. In his View of a Shore with the Artist’s Wagon and Tent at Enö, they are seen on the south-west coast of the island of Enø. They have spilled out into a tent, whose heavy guy ropes are being used to dry washing, perhaps not such a far cry from the armies of long past.