View on the upper reach of the Grand Canal, Venice with the Palazzi Corner and Pesaro

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”

This drawing is probably identifiable as one 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). He did manage to make a few spectacular architectural drawings, but in a letter to Joan Severn of 20 May 1877, written shortly before leaving, he confessed: “I came to Venice meaning to do nothing but finished work! and the lot of scrawls and rags I’ve done!! worse than ever”