The late nineteenth century brought great changes throughout Europe. Country areas were depopulated as cities attracted labour to work in their factories, lured by the empty promise of material comforts. Food markets became dominated by larger suppliers and merchants, and smaller farms with low yields found themselves unable to compete. Although mechanisation was developing rapidly, machinery cost money, and smaller farms were unable to benefit from the productivity improvements occurring on larger farms.

One substantial improvement that many could use was better drainage of arable land. Although hardly technological, as most land drains are made from baked clay, many areas across Europe had suffered waterlogging of their best fields during the winter. Land drains dug into the field to draw water to a ditch at the edge significantly increased areas under cultivation, as well as crop yields.

More substantial drainage works had already turned large areas of bog and marsh into productive farmland, throughout the Netherlands, and in areas like the Fens in England during the decades prior to 1820. Both remain among the largest civil engineering projects undertaken in Europe.

Steam engines came into agricultural use in the late nineteenth century. At first they were largely static, but from the 1860s they became self-propelled, now known as traction engines and still a popular feature of country fairs. Teams travelled the countryside hiring out the services of their steam engine for threshing and ploughing.

After the First World War, internal combustion engines replaced steam, and the first real tractors came into use.

Heinrich Vogeler’s Farmer Ploughing from the period 1930-42 shows a tractor with an internal combustion engine and its own tracks, towing a heavy plough.

Lighter wheeled tractors became popular during the middle of the twentieth century. Percy Shakespeare’s painting of December on the Downs, Wartime, made in the period 1939-44, is its own lesson in agricultural history. In the distance, on one of the rolling chalk downs in the south of England, are three horse-drawn ploughs tackling some of the steeper ground.

With a high proportion of men serving in the armed forces, the two tractors in the foreground are being driven and tended by young women, dubbed the Women’s Land Army. The further of the two tractors is drawing a lighweight wheeled plough, better suited to this land.

In 1942, when Frances Hodgkins was living in the south-west of England, at Corfe Castle in Dorset, she painted this gouache of Broken Tractor showing the mechanical disarray that overtook many farmyards during the twentieth century, as their ageing farm machinery fell beyond economic repair.

With networks of railways and later roads reaching deep into many country districts, agricultural produce could be transported in bulk and travel from producer to consumer in a matter of hours. Early morning trains carrying milk to cities became widespread.

JMW Turner was among the first painters to capture this in his Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway in 1844. This pioneering railway connected London with rich farming country across the south of England, down into western counties, eventually reaching Cornwall in 1859, fifteen years after Turner had completed this painting.

Giuseppe De Nittis here shows The Passing of a Train through productive French countryside between 1869-80.

The winners here though were those farmers who were already prospering. Smallholders and others who still farmed using traditional methods were left behind, in increasing poverty and neglect.

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.