Long Venice

Both Whistler and Pennell sought to capture the aesthetic spirit of the city rather than document accurate views, and allowed the printmaking process to reverse the scenes on their plates. When the Doges Palace is viewed from the waterfront, the two windows with ornate, Gothic tracery should be on the right, but in these two prints the opposite is true. (See D. Y. Cameron's Palace of the Doges for an accurate image.) Each of these long etchings was made looking west, past the Doges Palace toward the mouth of the Grande Canal and the two domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute. Pennell later recalled the hot Venetian summer of 1883, noting that he and his American friends went swimming.