Canaletto & London

While Canaletto’s studio flourished in the 1730s, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) disrupted the flow of art-buying visitors to Venice. Canaletto resolved that if his British clients could no longer come to him, he must go to them. He arrived in London in 1746 and remained nine years, encountering a metropolis that imagined itself as a new Rome: a modern and commercial capital of a global empire. Adapting his veduta approach to this setting, he was among the first to portray London’s architecture, parks, and ceremonies as emblems of national identity. In views such as The Thames on Lord Mayor’s Day, bands of water, city, and sky frame the mayor’s gilded barge beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Protestant rival to St. Peter’s in Rome. The bustling river evokes Venice, yet the rebuilt city—rising after the Great Fire of 1666—proclaims Britain’s modernity. However, Canaletto’s serene vistas also gloss over the city’s social tensions that artists like his English contemporary William Hogarth exposed with biting cynicism.