J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The subject of this slight sketch was identified as Newcastle upon Tyne by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1 For Shrewsbury, Finberg’s previously published suggestion, see under folio 12 verso (D22172). In the distance to the south is the keep of Newcastle Castle, and on the right in the foreground is the east end of St Nicholas’s Cathedral. The street plan between the two has since changed considerably, and the view is obscured.

Turner had first visited the industrial port in 1801, sketching the castle and St Nicholas’s in the Helmsley sketchbook (Tate D02603–D02604; Turner Bequest LIII 94a, 95). There is a view along the River Tyne in the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook (Tate D13558; Turner Bequest CLXVII 2), the basis of a watercolour (Tate D18144; Turner Bequest CCVIII K),2 engraved for the Rivers of England in 1823. Turner perhaps briefly revisited Newcastle on his way back from Scotland in 1831 (see the sketchbook’s Introduction); there are other views on folios 1 recto, 8 verso, 9 recto and 36 recto (D22151, D22164, D22165, D22216).