Sensational find

Painting by William Turner discovered in Vienna!

Art find: J. W. Turner, "Venice, seen from the Canale della Giudecca"

(Bild: (c) Artziwna)

A lost painting by the British Romantic artist Joseph Mallord William Turner has been rediscovered in Vienna. It is the sister painting to Turner's classic "Venice, seen from the Canale delle Giudecca", which hangs in London's Victoria & Albert Museum. 

The known oeuvre of one of the great masters of light is likely to grow: according to the Viennese gallery Artziwna, a Turner painting has been discovered in the German capital. A scientific publication on the genesis of the work has now been published.

In the analytical work entitled "Joseph Mallord William Turner. A Rediscovery", experts such as Belvedere curator Franz Smola and Katja Sterflinger identify the painting. It was examined for typical color pigments using X-ray fluorescence analysis. "We were able to prove Turner's color palette through our analysis," Sterflinger, head of the Institute for Natural Science and Technology in Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, is quoted as saying.

Turner, who was born in 1775 and died in 1851, is considered one of the most important precursors of the French Impressionists with his landscape paintings dominated by light and play of color. The painting now attributed to him, measuring around 60 x 90 centimetres, has been compared not only from a technological perspective but also from an art historical one. And the conclusion of the experts is clear here too. "All scientific research proves that this can only be a painting by Turner," says Franz Smola.

According to Artziwna, the work was previously privately owned in Vienna, although the provenance of the 180-year-old painting with regard to its early phase and its journey to Vienna cannot be clearly traced. In 1980, the purchase of "Venice, seen from the Canale delle Giudecca, with the church of Santa Maria della Salute" by one of the previous owners in Vienna was documented. In 2005, the current owner acquired the Turner painting from an Austrian private collector. His aim is now to sell the work, which dates from around 1840.