St Mark's Square, Venice shows the Piazzetta at the water's edge, looking across the mouth of the Grand Canal in the warm light of early evening. The granite column of St Mark rises at the centre, the winged lion dark against a pale gold sky, with the arcaded front of the Marciana Library at the right and pigeons gathered on the paving below. Figures cross the square in ones and twos, a woman in a pale coat leading a child in red, and beyond them a three-masted sailing ship lies moored at the quay. Across the water the domes of Santa Maria della Salute close the view, painted in soft blues and creams where the city meets the evening haze.

Venice was Auguste Bouvard's lifelong subject. Trained in architecture before he turned to painting, he brought an architect's understanding to the city's buildings, and it shows here in the drawing of the Library and the column, precise without stiffness, and in the way the paving and mooring posts carry the eye into depth. He painted the city's canals and monuments through every light, and views of the Piazzetta with the Salute beyond stand among his most sought after compositions. This is Venice as the Grand Tour promised it: the lion, the water and the light.