One of The Bowes Museum’s most loved and best-known paintings has gone on view in a prestigious international touring exhibition in Japan alongside others from galleries and museums around the UK.
Regatta on the Grand Canal was painted in 1730 by the Italian, Giovanni Antonia Canal, who was better known by his nickname, Canaletto (little Canal) – used to distinguish him from his father who was also an artist.
The painting, which underwent extensive conservation work earlier this year to strengthen its 2.5 metre by more than two-metre high frame for the journey, is appearing in a major exhibition called Canaletto and the Splendour of Venice that’s been organised by The Mainichi Newspapers Group in Japan. It will return to the Museum in summer 2025.
This show brings together 50 works, oil paintings, dessini, prints and others, mainly on loan from British collections, to a new audience showcasing the Italian master with his predecessors, contemporaries and followers.
Vicky Sturrs, The Bowes Museum’s Director of Programmes and Collections, said: “The Bowes Museum’s collection is recognised as designated and internationally significant, so it’s brilliant to be able to share it with people across the globe and we’re absolutely delighted that this painting will introduce the museum to new audiences in Japan.
“It’s also great that the museum has been able to delve into its diverse collection to bring another equally sizeable and beautiful painting out of storage to showcase to our visitors while the Canaletto’s on tour. It’s been temporarily replaced by Goris de Coxie’s artwork of a landscape with figures and a chateau dating from 1693.”
The exhibition will be at: Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art; July 27 to September 29; Sompo Museum of Art, October 12 to December 28; Museum of Kyoto, February 15 to April 13; and Yamaguchi Prefectural Art Museum; April 24 to June 22.
