Known mainly for the practice of portraiture and landscape, Marques de Oliveira (or Marques d'Oliveira) shows in this painting a sense of modernity, in his attention to light and its vibrations on the water surface. In this landscape, we witness the evanescent and brief passage of a gondola through the waters of the Venetian Lagoon. Over it, a grey blue sky, with clouds in changing rosy shades, casts its reflections into the water, next to the pier and near the bottom of the composition. The viewer's attention is brought to the vessel as it casts a reflection in the water that transforms black into a long and almost symmetrical green patch.

Displaying a greater amount of sky than of water, stressing the weight of the atmosphere on the body of the landscape, cut to a third of its horizontal structure by the black boat, the composition, in its overall transparent colours, inspires a stillness that evokes the painting of some Venetian vedutas. Quite ethereal, the gondolier almost merges with the water and the sky. Apart from his tanned face and hands, he wears the same colours displayed in the background and only a deeper density of paint states his presence. Landscape itself is merely suggested. There are no clear features, apart from the central elements: the vessel and its handler. Water and air share the same fluidity and vibration. Marques de Oliveira's skilful and rigorous brushstrokes define both volume and light in an absolutely synthetic way, involving them in a moist and placid atmosphere that evokes the mythical melancholic imperturbability of the Serenissima.

EF