James Wilson Morrice’s Boats by a Promenade, Public Gardens captures a quiet quayside moment on the Riva dell’Impero (now Riva dei Sette Martiri), near the Giardini Pubblici in Venice. Painted circa 1898, the work features trabàccoli—large, two-masted cargo boats—moored alongside the promenade, their reddish sails forming a colourful cascade that dominates the composition. These boats were attractive subjects to the artists who traveled to Venice: “Down by the Public Gardens,” one contemporary travel writer observed, “you are always sure to find a number of them lying idly by the shore … while almost as many artists are painting or trying to paint them from under the trees.” Executed with swift, confident brushwork and rich tonal harmonies, this painting is a prime example of Morrice’s Venetian period.

Morrice’s perspective, likely from the landing steps near the water, affords him a compelling angle on the scene. He compresses the sailboats into a dynamic, nearly abstract composition. The patchwork of earth-toned sails surges upward, forming what Sandra Paikowsky calls “a chromatic jigsaw of differently sized and shaped trapezoids.”

These vibrant sails were not mere aesthetic devices but rooted in tradition, and Morrice was likely drawn to this blend of folk craft and abstract beauty. As described in historical accounts, Chioggia fishermen painted their sails using earthy pigments, applied with sponges, then dipped them repeatedly in sea water to fix the colour. In the foreground, a mysterious emblem is emblazoned on the prow of the nearest trabàccolo—folkloric or protective markings traditionally painted on Venetian boats.

Rather than depict Venice’s grand architecture, Morrice isolates a modest, working section of the city. A woman in a red cap reclines near the hull, and along the promenade a lone parasol-bearing figure walks towards the gardens. These human notes are deliberately understated; Morrice gives over most of the surface to the boats and sails, emphasizing their rhythmic mass and chromatic complexity. His flattening of forms and energetic brushwork bring the composition close to abstraction, the background trees and Castello rooftops dissolving softly into a haze. The deep greens of the water vibrate against the coral pinks of the sails, and the play of light over the hulls and stone walkway suggests an artist reveling in colour and surface. Paikowsky likens Morrice’s painting to Dorothy Menpes’s 1904 description of Venetian fishing boats: “Their sails are folded close together, like the wings of great vermilion moths. These sails are of the deepest oranges and reds, rich red-browns, orange yellows, and burnt siennas, contrasting strangely with the cool grey waters of the lagoon…”

Morrice’s framing is tight and deliberate. He presents no sweeping vistas—just a sliver of Venetian daily life, distilled through modernist perception. This painting stands among Morrice’s most resolved and elegant Venetian paintings. It was most recently featured in the landmark 2025 exhibition Morrice in Venice at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and is illustrated in Paikowsky’s authoritative monograph, James Wilson Morrice: Paintings and Drawings of Venice, confirming its significance within the artist’s oeuvre.