View on the upper reach of the Grand Canal, Venice, with the Palazi Tron and Duodo

Ruskin’s decision to return to Venice for the winter of 1876-7 was partly motivated by a plan to revise The Stones of Venice, ‘gathering bits up’ again of his beloved city. In a letter to Charles Eliot Norton he said his intention was to make “pencil outline drawings from general scenes”, to round out the original text and thereby perhaps make it more appealing to the general reader. He also gave a sense of personal retrieval of happier past experience – or of simple nostalgia – by adding: “I will make new drawings giving some notion of my old memories of the place, in Turner’s time”

There is certainly enough detail overlaying the hatched and shaded under-drawing for an engraver to work up the rows of palaces, but much detail has been left incomplete. This may reflect the frequent distraction and depression suffered during his stay: a similar drawing was exhibited at the Fine Art Society in 1878, under the title View of the Upper Reach of the Grand Canal, looking north, and – (given up in despair).