Boudin, Eugène, Venice-Seascape at the Giudecca, 1895

Boudin is most famous for his scenes of fashionable Normandy seaside resorts, painted in the 1860s, but he also travelled abroad. Venice offered his favorite motifs--sea and sky. A large sailing ship and small fishing boats are moored at the Giudecca, the island across from Piazza San Marco. The Dominican church Santa Maria del Rosario and Andrea Palladio’s masterpiece Il Redentore beyond it furnish topographical references, but the reflections in water and the cloud-covered sky dominate the scene and are the real subjects.