‘Venice, From the Giudecca’

 

A large & finely executed panoramic view of the Grand Canal, depicting Santa Maria della Salute and The Doges Palace from the Giudecca. This work is after the original by famed British seascape artist J. M. William Turner R.A. (1775-1851), which remains in the permanent collection of the Victorian & Albert Museum, London.

 

Oil on canvas, measuring 23.75" high x 35.75" wide, and set within its original water gilded frame, measuring 33.5" high x 45.75" wide x 4.5" deep. Signed on the stretcher by the artist Erna Scharff with reference to Turner, together with a handwritten note affixed to the bottom stretcher citing provenance to ‘Miss Macaulay, 203 King Street’.

 

ARTIST BIO: Erna Scharff (1895-1982) was born in Landau Germany on September 9, 1895, as Erna Kuhn and later married Alfred Scharff. She is credited with several Van Gogh-inspired landscape works, along with her masterpiece titled "The Tallit Maker" which is on display at the Emsland Museum in Lingen, Germany. Soon after the events of "Reichskristallnacht" that saw her apartment and many other Jewish places of worship and businesses destroyed on November 9th,1938, she fled Nazi Germany and came to the United States with her husband Alfred and her son Richard. Arter arriving in New York City, she resumed painting at her studio located on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn. It was there that she created some of her best landscape paintings, which as mentioned in the bio-material (courtesy of The Georghii Collection), there is mention of "a large painting of Venice".

 

Erna Scharff died in Brooklyn, NY on March 1st, 1982, at the age of 86.

 

PROVENANCE: The former Macaulay family home located at 203 King Street West in Kingston Ontario, was built for Mrs. Ann Macaulay, the mother of the Honourable John Macaulay, and remained in the Macaulay family until 1947.

 

The Honourable John A. Macaulay (1792-1857) was born in Kingston, the eldest son of Robert and Ann Macaulay. He was a lawyer, former postmaster of Kingston and owner of the Kingston Chronicle. He became a Legislative Councillor and Surveyor General of Upper Canada in 1836. In 1838 he became Civil and Private secretary to Lieutenant Governor Sir George Arthur, and Inspector General of Public Accounts which he resigned from in 1842.

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