Laguna, Venice (View of Shipping from the Riva)

Description

Frank Duveneck
United States, 1848–1919
Laguna, Venice (View of Shipping from the Riva)
1880
Etching
Bequest of Margaret Watson Parker, 1954/1.279
Duveneck studied at the Royal Academy in Munich, and by 1878 he was teaching painting in Germany. He gathered around him a coterie of other Americans studying in Germany—including William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), John Twachtman (1853–1902), and Otto Bacher. During the summer of 1879, these artists arrived together in Venice and soon became acquainted with Whistler. Laguna, Venice was drawn from the Casa Jankowitz, where Duveneck, Bacher, and, eventually, Whistler resided, and shows the same view that Whistler sketched in his Upright Venice and The Riva,
No. 2.
Whistler had a profound impact on the other American artists residing at the Casa Jankowitz—so much so that when Duveneck showed his Venice etchings at an exhibition in London in 1881, Seymour Haden, whose bitter estrangement from Whistler nettled both artists, thought they were by Whistler. Believing that his brother-in-law and former friend had violated his contract with the Fine Art Society, he quickly brought these etchings to the attention of officials at the Society; the error was pointed out and Haden was forced to apologize.