The view is east-south-east across the River Thames towards Windsor Castle, with the village of Clewer on the right; Turner seems to have drawn the spire of St Andrew’s Church twice, once obscured by a poplar. The view towards the castle is now disrupted by the dual-carriageway Queen Elizabeth Bridge (beyond which a railway line had already been built across the meadows, crossing the river west of the castle), just east of Clewer, itself obscured by dense tree growth along the bank.
The exact course of the meandering river in the foreground is unclear, and really only signalled by the presence of a man in a punt, but Turner’s viewpoint appears to be somewhere south-east of the later Royal Windsor Racecourse, probably on the tight bend of the north bank, since views of the castle on folios 2 recto and verso and 3 recto (
D20559–D20561) indicate that he was walking eastwards along that side.
Eric Shanes has mentioned this drawing in relation to the watercolour
Windsor Castle of about 1828–9 (British Museum, London),
1 engraved in 1831 for Turner’s
Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions:
T05086,
T06093), although the composition has more in common with the sketches on subsequent pages.
