The view is taken from the Canal di Fusina with the Giudecca on the right. The picture was bought at the Academy by Elhanan Bicknell and was well received by the critics, together with Turner's other Venetian subject, 'Ducal Palace, Dogana, with Part of San Giorgio, Venice' (Oberlin College, Ohio). The Athenaeum for 5 June praised them as 'so much less extravagant than his late Turnerisms ... In these Venetian pictures it would be hard to exceed. The clearness of air and water - the latter taking every passing reflection with a pellucid softness beyond the reach of meaner pencil. The architecture, too, is more carefully made out than has lately been the case with Mr. Turner, and both pictures are kept alive by groups of southern figures, which, seen from a certain remoteness, give a beauty and not a blemish to the scenes they animate.' For the Spectator, 8 May, both pictures were 'gorgeous creations conveying a poetical idea of the actual scene steeped in an atmosphere of light and colour.'