Bernardo Canal paints Venice

As his son's Canaletto was becoming more and more successful, also Bernardo the father started painting Venice, the wonderful city they were living in, which sold so good to the tourists.

Yes, there was a "Grand Tour" going on at the time, which started as a XVII to early XIX century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, and Italy was the key destination.

Upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank, typically accompanied by a tutor or family member, would take advantage of the money they had to have fun and gain knowledge of the world.

Rich tourists they would be called today.

And Venice was definitely a high point of their tour and ... bringing a painting home was very likely a must.

Canaletto went straight into this kind of business, his patrons were showing him the way to be appreciated and make money, as he was considered the best vedutista (view painter) of those times. And he was, this is for sure.

Bernardo Canal adapted his skills to his son's way of creating art, so he too started to paint views of Venice, sometimes making a copy of his son Antonio's painting, but still giving his style to them.

A style that, surely was not as precise, tri-dimensional, chromatically emotional and paranoically defined, but of a good quality that could be appreciated by the foreign buyers.

Some paintings may be similar to paintings by Luca Carlevarijs or the swedish Johan Richter, who were - like him - taking advantage of the wave created by Canaletto's art, and the augmented request of Venice paintings.