THE RIALTO, VENICE

BY WALTER SICKERT

This line block image is in landscape orientation. The image is of a city situated on the far side of a small waterway from the viewer. The image has water in the bottom third of the picture plane. On the left side in the foreground two poles stick out from the water, and one is closer to the viewer than the other that appears more to the left and backgrounded. Two more poles appear deeper in the background near the midline of the page height and along the left page edge. There is a small boat drifting behind them. In the mid-ground at the centre of the page is the connection between a bridge spanning the left mid-ground and a building that populates the right mid-to-background area. Just in front of the building that takes up the right upper half of the page is a group of small boats seemingly docked against the edge of the wharf that the water laps up against. They are long gondola boats. The building has one wall that faces the viewer straight on, with three levels and three rounded doorways on the first level while there are four on the next two upper levels. To the left there is a wall that stands slightly angled back to the left. It also has about four rounded doorways or windows along its surface, lightly sketched in. The building has a wall mirroring the angle of this one on the other side of the flat wall facing the viewer. It is also sketched in with archways. The roof is flat but there is the peaked roof of another building in the background that appears above. The bridge that spans to the left of the building is arched to allow for boats to pass under and has guardrails on the sides of the surface to allow vehicles and pedestrians to pass over it. The bridge has a covered tunnel on top that has eight arched doorways across, with one taller arch slightly to the right of centre. There is a person sitting on a bit of land that juts under the bridge from the right side. Their feet hang over the edge. On the left side of the bridge is a connection to a street in the distance. There are buildings lightly drawn in from the left side of the page behind the road where the bridge meets. One of the buildings in the upper left corner of the page has a smoke stack with dark smoke coming out. These buildings continue across the background behind the bridge to where the line of sight is covered by the bridge and the foregrounded building spanning across the right upper page. The artist’s signature appears in the bottom left corner of the page: “Sickert.”

MLA citation:

Sickert, Walter. “The Rialto, Venice.” The Savoy, vol. 2, April 1896, p. 145. The Savoy Digital Edition, edited by Christopher Keep and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra 2018-2019. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2019, https://1890s.ca/savoyv2_sickert_venice/

magazine_images The Savoy 2 The Rialto, Venice Walter Sickert Pen and ink Paul Naumann

“Sickert”

Italy and Venice Window, Boat, Bridge, Poles, Smoke stack, and Gondola 1890s Outdoor setting, Bridge, City, and Canal