When Renoir’s Venetian pictures were first exhibited, one critic called them “the most outrageous series of ferocious daubs that any slanderer of Venice could possibly imagine.” They constituted a radical departure from traditional Venetian vedute—sober view paintings emphasizing the city’s famous monuments. Barely recognizable as the stretch of canal between the Ca’ Foscari palace and the Rialto Bridge, Renoir’s picture dissolves stone façades into a lacy pattern of color no more material than water or clouds.
