From Indianapolis Museum of Art (9/5/08)
"Sargent drew and painted, the accidental things that caught his eye, the queer and irregular shapes of dark gondolas on the canals . . . the flash of light on the facades of palaces and the reflections on the glittering water."
-Martin Hardie, 1930
Sargent gave this watercolor to his friend Mrs. Charles Hunter, the wife of an English coal magnate, and did so frequently "until it seems her house is almost overflowing."