The latest instalment in the Exhibition on Screen gallery-film series rolls off the production line boasting its usual impeccable production values and informative overview. This account of Canaletto – the immensely popular 18th-century specialist in the Venetian cityscape – and his context takes its cue from the show currently running at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace. Partly, of course, the film acts as a real-experience facsimile – like all those theatre and opera retransmissions – that mean culture vultures who can’t get there at least have a chance to see some of it. But – presumably mindful of those critics who suggest that there’s nothing like the real thing – Exhibition on Screen’s offerings have evolved beyond an art gallery walkabout to become solid, comprehensive accounts of artists and their period.
Consequently, this Canaletto film is well up to par with a substantial BBC documentary: well-informed talking heads, a plethora of historical detail and nicely shot details of the actual work. The film-makers are encouraged in their digressive approach by the paucity of detail available of Canaletto’s life as well as – if we’re honest – the undeniable homogeneity of his paintings. (When the big twist, in career terms, is that Canaletto swapped Venice for London for a few years, you know you are going to struggle for vivid biographical nuggets.)
Fortunately, compensation arrives with a large section of the film devoted to Canaletto’s remarkable agent, Joseph Smith, who capitalised on the popularity of the Grand Tour to sell large amounts of paintings to the visiting British aristocracy. (Smith eventually sold his personal art collection to George III, thereby virtually establishing the Royal Collection itself.) Perhaps intentionally, Canaletto himself emerges from this film as a bit of an enigma, but the surrounding landscape is handsomely coloured in.
