Dr. Emil Hultmark, Sweden.

Treviso, Casa dei Ferraresi, Canaletto.  Venezia e i suoi splendori, 23 October 2008 - 5 April 2009, no. 20.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been recently restored and no further restoration is recommended. The paint layer is clean. Although the lining is older, the paint layer is stable and is in lovely, un-abraded condition with hardly any restorations. Small spots are visible in the lower right corner and in the lower left in the dark water. Elsewhere however, there is an amazing lack of retouching, which indicates that the picture is in beautiful state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

By the time he moved to Venice at the age of thirty, Johann Richter (also known as Giovanni Richter) was already an accomplished painter of landscapes and decorations, having studied with David Klocker Ehrenstrahl and Johan Sylvius in his native Stockholm.  When he settled in Venice he became a student of the pioneering view painter Luca Carlevarijs, and his subsequent oeuvre, dominated by views of his new city, is clearly indebted to the lessons of his master.  Richter's earliest known paintings of Venice date to 1717 (View of the Piazza San Marco  and a View of the Grand Canal near Saint Lucia, both signed and dated 1717, O. Siren collection, Stockholm), and in these and later works one can see a forerunner of the later veduta painters, such as Canaletto and Bellotto. 

The present work depicts the island of San Giorgio, with the monastery and church of San Giorgio Maggiore, as seen from across the Canale di San Marco.  Richter's warm, pastel palette bathes the stone buildings of the island in golden-pink light, while his hazy atmospheric effects mimic a warm summer's day and lend an almost dream-like quality to the scene.  The sense of scale and recession in space is heightened by the large figures and boats that anchor the foreground of the composition, a device that was also used to great effect by Richter's teacher, Luca Carlevarijs.  Other examples of these figures in Richter's oeuvre include the gondola and boat in his The Bacino di San Marco, Venice (sold New York, Sotheby's, 16 May 1996, lot 73) and the figures and large oared sailboat moored at the quay in The View of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore (sold, Florence, Sotheby's, 27 November 1989, lot 332).