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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk, Looking across the River Merwede from Zwijndrecht 1817

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk, Looking across the River Merwede from Zwijndrecht’ 1817
Folio 76 Verso:
Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk, Looking across the River Merwede from Zwijndrecht 1817
D13143
Turner Bequest CLXII 77a
Pencil on ‘blue’ laid writing paper, 93 x 156 mm
Partial watermark: ‘Pro Patria’ design
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Dead Calm water lighter | in the [?North]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner spent a day and a half in Dordrecht as he returned across Holland at the end of his continental tour in 1817; see his dated route in his Itinerary Rhine Tour pocketbook (Tate (D12696; Turner Bequest CLIX 100). Despite limited time he made numerous drawings as well as the extensive notes on the packet-boat De Zwaan on the recto (D13142), and must already have been planning the painting Dort or Dordrecht. The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam becalmed (1818; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut).1
With the page turned horizontally, this drawing from near the landing-stage at Zwijndrecht, looking across the River Merwede to Dordrecht with the Grote Kerk, windmills and other buildings, is a different composition with shipping including a merchantman. Nevertheless its ‘Dead Calm water’, sky flecked with the tinted clouds characteristic of the Dordrecht master Aelbert Cuyp (1620‒1691) and reeds along the riverbank anticipate important elements in the painting. As noted by Malcolm Cormack,2 the reeds in the foreground of the drawing are a major feature of the picture, stretching far into the distance on the right. Their presence around Dordrecht was described by Charles Campbell in his guide to the Low Countries, used (and lost) during Turner’s tour in 1817.3

Quirine van der Meer Mohr
December 2013

David Blayney Brown
September 2025

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.102‒4 no.137, pl.140.
2
Cormack 1983, p.38.
3
C. Campbell, The Traveller’s Complete Guide through Belgium and Holland, revised ed., London 1817, p.234.

How to cite

Quirine van der Meer Mohr and David Blayney Brown, ‘Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk, Looking across the River Merwede from Zwijndrecht 1817’, catalogue entry, September 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/dordrecht-and-the-grote-kerk-looking-across-the-river-merwede-from-zwijndrecht-r1212516, accessed 31 July 2026.