A significant Streeton rediscovery: 'The Grand Canal' (1908)

Arthur Streeton, The Grand Canal, 1908, oil on canvas, 93 x 169cm (36.61 x 66.54in); private collection; photo: Glen Watson

The Grand Canal (1908) by Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) has remained in one family’s ownership for over a century, mostly out of public circulation, and not featured in major Streeton publications. Until now, the provenance of the picture, its date and title, have been unresolved.

The rediscovery and identification of this picture is made all the more remarkable by the work being one of Streeton’s larger and more important paintings. His Venetian series is leading in his oeuvre, and this work is core among the Venetian paintings, in both scale and accomplishment. Streeton honeymooned in Venice in May 1908, and visited again in October of that year. Of 85 catalogue entries in 1908, when most of Streeton’s Venetian works were painted, 78 works are Venetian scenes.

The view in this painting is similar to that in paintings by Canaletto and other greats, including Canaletto’s The Grand Canal looking South from Ca’ Foscari to the Carità (c. 1726–27). On 8 October 1908, in a letter to Baldwin Spencer, Streeton wrote: ‘… I’ve painted on 66x36 from the top of Palazzo Foscari – commanding a fine view of the Grand Canal.’ (See Ann Galbally and Anne Gray, Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton 1890–1943, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1989, p. 114.) The stretcher size corresponds exactly to the newly identified work.

This research unearthing The Grand Canal (1908) is timely: informing the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) of the existence of the work has seen its inclusion in their forthcoming exhibition ‘Streeton’, which opens in September 2020. AGNSW Director Michael Brand describes it as ‘the most important painting in the selection of Venetian subject works from 1908’. The painting was last shown at AGNSW for the ‘Loan Exhibition of the Works of Arthur Streeton’ in 1931–32. Since then, it appears not to have shown until 2016 and 2018, in exhibitions curated by the writer. It was not included in the ‘Arthur Streeton Memorial Exhibition’ of 1944, where up to 11 of 135 Streeton artworks exhibited were Venetian scenes.

Publication of this finding brings the painting to public attention now in late 2019 following two other Streeton paintings having re-emerged into circulation in the past five years. In 2016, And the Sunlight Clasps the Earth (1895) was rediscovered in a private collection in Tasmania after around 120 years out of view, and Ariadne (1895) was largely unseen in a private collection in Sydney for 70 years until its 2014 sale.

The painting is no. 346 in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue of 1935, one of two major Grand Canal works listed. The picture can be so identified principally through a visual record of the alternate Grand Canal picture, no. 365, owned by Robert Mond of Sussex (1867–1938) which was printed in the 1919 publication The Art of Arthur Streeton and titled The Grand Canal Venice (exhibited in 1908 at the New English Art Club). Arthur Sydney Baillieu (father of artist Sunday Reed) is established as the owner of The Grand Canal (1908) both with the purchase confirmation that I have found through Streeton’s letters (Baillieu acquired the work from the Victorian Artists Society exhibition ‘Mr Streeton’s pictures’ in June 1914 – see Galbally and Gray, p. 133), and by the painting’s exhibition at AGNSW in 1931–32 as I have discovered from a label on the painting’s verso.

There are no large Grand Canal works documented by Streeton in 1927, when a smaller picture Grand Canal, Venice was painted – it is near identical pictorially to The Grand Canal (1908) – or indeed at any time between 1908 and 1935 when his catalogue of works was published.

For the reasons outlined, I attribute this artwork as being Streeton’s The Grand Canal (1908), catalogue entry no. 346 in The Arthur Streeton Catalogue of 1935. The painting has reached the current owner via Arthur’s sister Amy Adelaide Shackell, passing by descent within the family.

Dr Sarah Schmidt is an Australian public gallery director and curator who manages public and cultural diplomacy for the Australian Embassy, Beijing. She was previously Director of Hamilton Gallery and Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of Ballarat. This is an edited excerpt from an essay to appear in a forthcoming edition of Art Monthly Australasia.