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

This page has a number of miscellaneous of sketches, inverted relative to its foliation. At the top is a rowing boat and passengers. Below is a view of Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk, with the latter shown again closer on the right of the next band of sketches, alongside a view of London and St Paul’s Cathedral from the River Thames. Beneath these are two more views of the Thames, at Blackwall and Erith. Lastly, in the bottom left corner, is a slight continuation of a sketch on folio 91 verso (D13170; Turner Bequest CLXII 92a) although these pages were not numbered sequentially in the 1909 Inventory (see the sketchbook’s Introduction for technical notes and concordance).

Assuming that the present page rightly belongs in this sketchbook (and the imagery on its other side is certainly Dutch), these views of London and the Thames cannot have been drawn, as has been suggested, on Turner’s outward trip down the river on his way to Ostend as he bought the book in Holland (see Introduction). They must have been made as he returned either direct from Rotterdam or later if he came back by sea from a northern port after visiting friends and patrons in County Durham and Yorkshire. Perhaps the sight of St Paul’s prompted a sketch from memory of the Grote Kerk at Dordrecht; great churches dominating their city and town.

Technical notes:

This side of the leaf is a little darkened from the early period when the leaf was extracted to display the verso (D13109; CLXII 60) at the National Gallery.