Eton College

Canaletto's view of Eton College from the Thames, painted around 1746 and now in the National Gallery London, was among the first works he produced on his arrival in England and demonstrates his immediate grasp of how to translate the Venetian veduta method to the very different light and architecture of the Thames Valley. Eton College, founded by Henry VI in 1440 across the river from Windsor Castle, was the most socially prestigious school in England, and many of Canaletto's potential British patrons had been educated there; a view of the college and the river would have had immediate personal resonance for the English aristocracy who collected his work. The Gothic chapel and collegiate buildings, viewed across the slow Thames with Windsor bridge in the distance, offered a picturesque combination of medieval architecture and pastoral landscape quite different from Venice's Baroque and Byzantine spectacle, and Canaletto rendered the softer English light and the gentler architectural character with characteristic skill. His English views, produced over nearly a decade, amount to a comprehensive visual survey of Georgian Britain's most significant architectural and topographical sites, paralleling the documentary ambition of his Venetian canal surveys.

Canaletto renders the Gothic college buildings and the river landscape with precise architectural detail and atmospheric light. The broader, softer handling of the English countryside represents his adaptation to the different conditions of English landscape painting.