Taking the waters

GIOVANNI ANTONIO CANAL, il Canaletto (1697–1768), has long been Britain’s favourite non-British 18th-century artist. Venice, his native city, was an essential stop on any Grand Tour from the 1720s until the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756. Paintings of the Grand Canal were the postcards or holiday snaps for the milordi Inglese (many of the first Tourists were actually Anglo-Irish) and there was a thriving industry to supply them.

Although there were medieval precedents in the form of pilgrimage or political exile, the concept of the Grand Tour to Italy as a gap year to round off a young British gentleman’s