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

With the sketchbook turned vertically, Turner worked urban views of St Peter Port, Guernsey onto this page. At the top of the page is a view up the narrow High Street, with its bow-fronted shop windows and overhanging timber framed buildings. Immediately to the left is the medieval Town Church, which is located at the southern end of High Street.1 The perspective of the street and church architecture are inconsistent with one another and so must constitute two separate sketches. In the lower half of the page is a group of figures on a street including a figure bending forward and a small child towards the right-hand side. High above the scene can be glimpsed the tower of Elizabeth College with its four neo-Gothic pinnacles,2 and the cylindrical ‘Grecian Doric’ church steeple of St James-the-Less.3 For the recurrence of St Peter Port scenery in the sketchbook, see the entry for folio 30 recto (D23576; Turner Bequest CCLII 30).