Canal in Burano (1909)

Inscription: signed and dated lower left ‘Arturo Noci / Burano 1909’.

Exhibitions: LXXX International Exhibition of Fine Arts of the Society of Fine Arts Lovers and Cultivators in Rome, Rome 1910.

Bibliography: LXXX International Exhibition of Fine Arts of the Society of Fine Arts Amateurs and Connoisseurs in Rome, Rome 1910, p. 27, no. 115; A. Colasanti, L’Esposizione internazionale di Roma, in Emporium, May 1910, vol. XXXI, p. 377, reprinted on p. 379; G. Stiavelli, La LXXX Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti in Roma, in “Ars et Labor”, 15 May 1910, p. 341, reprinted on p. 338 (with the title “Sulla laguna veneta”); M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, P. Spadini, L. Djokic (ed.), Arturo Noci: un pittore tra Roma e New York 1874-1953, Rome 1996, p. 98, no. 135.

Long believed to be lost, Canale di Burano is considered one of Arturo Noci’s most significant landscapes. From the outset, the Roman painter devoted much of his energy to landscape painting, demonstrating, as we shall see, the marked poetic sensitivity in the representation of nature that would characterise his entire career. He received his first important recognition in this field in 1897, when, already winner of the prestigious Stanzani Prize for painting awarded by the Accademia dei Virtuosi del Pantheon, he was awarded the gold medal for the “landscape prize” of the Werstappen bequest of the Accademia di San Luca. The prize was awarded to a painting with a melancholic, twilight atmosphere, significantly entitled with a quote from Giacomo Leopardi’s “La sera del dì di festa” (The Evening of the Feast Day): “Già tace ogni sentiero” (Every path is silent). Noci thus demonstrated that he already possessed a defined, personal and recognisable artistic language, aware of the research of the most influential European artists of his time.

Although he had already presented other landscapes at the annual exhibitions of the “Società di Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti” in Rome, Noci’s debut in an exhibition of international renown came at the 1901 Venice Biennale, where he presented Giardino abbandonato (Abandoned Garden). The work was an immediate success, confirmed by its purchase by King Victor Emmanuel III. Critics began to place Noci among the landscape painters of the school of Nino Costa1, recognising in his views “a widespread poetry that imbues everything with a great languor and sweet abandon”2. The predilection in his paintings for the warm tones of sunset and melancholic atmospheres – often emphasised by the absence of figures, as in the aforementioned Giardino abbandonato or Erma solitaria (exhibited at the Promotrice in Naples in 1904)3 – contributed, in those years, to his definition as a “painter of sad things”4, with a lyrical sensibility akin to that of some of the most acclaimed poets of the time, particularly the “crepuscolari”, such as Corrado Govoni. Encouraged by the critics, Noci devoted himself with increasing intensity to landscape painting, strengthened by the acclaim he received at the Amatori e Cultori exhibitions, where the poetic inspiration of his compositions earned him comparisons with Vittore Grubicy. “Many are called, but few are chosen” in landscape painting, wrote Romolo Artioli in 1902: ‘Many speak to the eyes with their motifs, polished and studied, dyed and re-dyed, but how many are there who know how to speak to the soul? Very few.

Noci is one of them. We would advise him, if our words do not displease him, to devote himself entirely to landscape, of which he is, in painting, a Grubicy.”5 The following year, Arduino Colasanti, referring once again to a landscape, even compared him to the poetry of Virgil6. Noci’s definitive consecration as a landscape painter came in 1904, when he was one of the founders of I XXV della Campagna romana. That year, he exhibited a view of Villa Borghese at the Universal Exposition in Saint Louis7, along with three other paintings, winning the bronze medal8, and published five plates depicting views of Rome in the prestigious edition of I castelli romani by Edoardo De Fonseca.

In light of the above, it is easy to understand why, at the time Canale di Burano was painted, Noci was unanimously recognised as one of the most important landscape painters working in Rome. As reported by Arturo Lancellotti9, the painting is part of “a series of impressions” made in the summer of 1909 in Burano. It is documented that the artist was on the lagoon island in August of that year, thanks in part to reports of a misadventure involving him and the painter Guido Marussig: the two, together with a friend from Trieste, were arrested and held in a cell for one night for venturing into a military zone off-limits to civilians, where they wanted to go to enjoy the sunset and paint en plein air10. Some of the paintings produced during that stay – including the work in question – were exhibited at the Amatori e Cultori exhibition in 1910, where they were very well received by critics. The views Canale di Burano and Sera a Burano, in particular, struck viewers with their evocative power: “[…] in their delicate shades, they reflect the divine melancholy of the lagoon”, wrote Colasanti in Emporium.

A photograph of the painting was published in 1910 in two reviews with two different titles: Canale a Burano, in the article mentioned above, and Sulla laguna veneta, in Stiavelli’s article in Ars et Labor. These titles, both present in the exhibition catalogue, refer to two different works; however, Colasanti’s article, which mentions “two views” instead of three, seems to suggest that this may be a double title for a single painting, both included in the catalogue by mistake.

As far as changes of ownership are concerned, current knowledge suggests that Canale di Burano belonged to the body of works that Noci took with him to New York in 1923, probably with the intention of including it in the solo exhibition he wanted to organise but which, for unknown reasons, never took place. Sold by the painter in New York to a private collector, together with two other paintings (Rinascita, 1917, and La pergola, 1920), the canvas remained in the United States until 2024.

1 S. Benelli, La IV Esposizione d’Arte a Venezia (1901), Florence 1901, p. 149: “[…] and finally the Giardino abbandonato by Noci and the Pomeriggio d’autunno by Ferretti. These works, together with the two canvases by Cabianca and those by Costa, set the tone for the Roman group and constitute its character”.

2C. Vizzotto, Nello studio d’Arturo Noci, in “La Sera”, 12 June 1905, p. 3.

3Società Promotrice Salvator Rosa, Catalogo della XXXII Esposizione di Belle Arti, Naples 1904, p. 19.

4C. Vizzotto, Un pittore di cose tristi. Arturo Noci, in “Natura ed Arte”, no. 6, 15 February 1905, pp. 370-378.

5R. Artioli, La vita a Roma: la “Promotrice”, in “La Settimana”, 1902, vol. I, no. 9, p. 696.

6A. Colasanti, The exhibition of the “Promotrice” in Rome, in “L’arte”, 1903, VI, p. 68: ‘More serene, more elegiac, Noci sings the sweet poetry of the evening in his villa illuminated by the soft moonlight and in the beautiful evening view of the port of San Francesco a Ripa. The light mist rising from the river, the contours of things lost in the uncertain twilight, the motionless boats that seem to sleep on the calm water, the first lights that come on in the opaque air reawaken in our hearts the memory of Roman sunsets in which, in the great silence of things, one seems to hear the broad rhythm of Virgil’s couplet: “Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant / Maioresque cadunt altis de monti bus umbrae”.

7 He exhibited three oil paintings: Villa Borghese, First Letter and Praying; and a watercolour, Head of a Girl. Official catalogue of exhibitors: Universal Exposition St. Louis, U.S.A., Saint Louis 1904, pp. 255-256.

8Italian prize winners at the Saint Louis Exhibition, in “Corriere della sera”, 17 November 1904, p. 2.

9A. Lancellotti, La LXXX Esposizione di Belle Arti a Roma, in “Natura ed Arte”, 1910, vol. I, fasc. XI, p. 724: “In another room, Arturo Noci, as a kind of interlude to his mellow female nudes, exhibits a portrait and a series of impressions taken last summer in Burano”.

10 Two well-known painters and a man from Trieste arrested as spies in the Cavallino fort, in “Gazzetta di Venezia”, 13 August 1909,

Manuel Carrera