LONDON, ENGLAND.-Our image of Venice has been shaped to a remarkable degree by the work of Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto (1697-1768). His dazzling paintings and lively drawings have fixed the 18th-century city of canals, palaces, churches and squares in the popular imagination. Canaletto’s greatest patron was his friend and agent Joseph Smith, the British Consul in Venice. The sale of Smith’s entire collection to George III in 1762 brought into royal ownership the world’s finest group of Canaletto’s works, including his greatest series of Venetian views from the late 1720s to early 1730s. Fourteen luminous paintings of the Grand Canal will form the centrepiece of the exhibition and will be displayed with 70 works on paper, the largest group of Canaletto’s drawings ever shown in the UK.

The exhibition will take the visitor on a journey from the quayside houses and workshops on the Grand Canal’s upper reaches to the bustling festivities of a regatta and Ascension Day celebrations around St Mark’s Square. Canaletto brilliantly captures the effects of light on stone and water, and fills each work with a snapshot of Venetian daily life.

The son of a leading theatrical scene-painter in Venice, Canaletto followed the family trade. As a youth he travelled with his father to Rome to paint opera scenery, but abandoned the theatre to paint and draw the city’s classical ruins. From 1720 and for much of his career Canaletto was based in Venice, with the exception of ten years spent intermittently in England between 1746 and 1755. For 40 years he worked for an insatiable foreign clientele, particularly the English nobility on the Grand Tour.

Though among the most celebrated of all topographical artists, Canaletto did not produce a straightforward transcription of reality. His compositions are built up from a mass of carefully observed detail from multiple viewpoints. He manipulated space, from a slight adjustment of the elements seen from a particular position and subtle changes of perspective to extreme distortion. In this way Canaletto created idealised views of the city, with such apparent accuracy that they have become the archetypal images of Venice.

Canaletto was one of the greatest draughtsmen of the 18th century and made copious sketches on the spot to serve as reference material in his studio. In the early 1730s his drawings evolved from preparatory sketches into the meticulously finished drawings that are particularly well represented in the exhibition. These were intended not as studies for paintings, but as works of art in their own right.

Canaletto worked primarily in pen and ink over a pencil under-drawing, sometimes with the addition of wash to create beguiling effects of light and shade. An early group of sketches of the area around St Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace are characterised by their energetic penwork. These give way to the more finished works of the artist’s maturity, such as the sequences of views along the Grand Canal, and of the churches and squares of Venice.

A group of wash drawings of the Venetian Lagoon are perhaps the most beautiful and atmospheric of all Canaletto’s landscapes. Their limpid style contrasts with the dynamic perspective of three optically distorted views of San Marco, in which the piazza opens out dramatically in front of the viewer.

Among the highlights of the drawings are Canaletto’s famous record of the Campanile undergoing repairs after a lightning strike and a delightful series of capricci, in which the artist playfully rearranged the familiar Venetian topography to create a city of his own imagination. The large Capriccio with a monumental staircase is among the greatest works of Canaletto’s career.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the catalogue Canaletto in Venice by Martin Clayton (231 pages, 130 colour illustrations), exhibition price £7.95.

At The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, Canaletto in Venice will be shown with Treasures from the Royal Collection, which includes paintings by Duccio, Dürer, Clouet, Rubens, Cuyp, Van Dyck, Claude and Lely, works by Fabergé, as well as furniture, sculpture and ceramics, jewellery, silver and gold.