Specifically, Sargent’s unique perspective from his gondola enabled him to pay close attention to the buildings’ most defining features just as he would for a portrait of a person. He was forced to look up at the buildings he was next to, and by including the prow of his gondola in some of the pictures, it gives us the feeling that we are beside him in the boat. One of his first watercolors from the second series, Venetian Doorway (1902) demonstrates a sustained transition from A Street in Venice (1882) as he continues to exclude people from the pictures and focuses on more famous buildings. Venetian Doorway can be seen as the “opening” to the second series as he exits the streets of Venice and enters a gondola on the water. He draws on his early interior paintings to produce a sense of depth and our eyes are drawn to the vertical center of the picture (Adelson et. al. 188) because we are eye-level with the floor of the hallway. He also provides more architectural detail than the earlier series, focusing on “asymmetry…rectilinear and curvilinear form” (Adelson et. al. 188), and it is definitely a scene that could only be distinguished by a Venetian native. In a picture of a more popular building, 
Scuola di San Rocco (1903), Sargent crops the watercolor so that only half of the building is shown and the perspective is from the water so that we are looking up at the building. In addition, Sargent uses the same method as in his street scenes, of narrowing the buildings on the right side of the watercolor so that there is a sense of the canal stretching deep into the picture. However, in contrast to his earlier paintings where he pays no attention to the details of the ground, Sargent is now at “ground level” with the waters; thus, he pays more attention to the movement and color of the water. Likewise, in Rio di Santa Maria Formosa (1905), Sargent’s perspective is most unusual as it is his most dense and compressed bridge compositions
(Adelson et. al. 197). The prow of his boat takes up much of the picture, but he paints the picture just before going under a bridge. Our view is pulled through to find another bridge in the background, as it keeps going down the local waterway. Of his experimentations with perspective, this seems to be the most powerful in placing the viewer in the midst of the scene because there is a sense of being completely surrounded by Venetian buildings and boats. In “showcasing” some of Venice’s buildings and bridges, Sargent gives us the perspective of a native Venetian navigating Venice by gondola.
Sargent, John Singer. Venetian Doorway. 1902. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Sargent, John Singer. Scuola di San Rocco. 1903. Private Collection. Location Unknown.
Sargent, John Singer. Rio di Santa Maria Formosa. 1905. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
