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

Finberg later annotated his basic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Various buildings’): ‘Antwerp’.1 Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, there are at least three bands of miscellaneous studies. At the top, the medieval turrets and gables of Antwerp’s riverside Het Steen fortress, since much restored, are shown. The setting, as shown by Turner’s various scrawled notes, was the fish market then situated south-west of the building; see Marché au Poissons à Anvers, an 1823 lithograph after de la Barriere, and The Fish Market, Antwerp, an 1837 engraving after W.H. Bartlett. The statue in the foreground presents the Madonna and Child standing on a starry globe supported by dolphins on a high, ornate plinth, decorated with scrolls and cartouches and housing a pump, the long handle of which can be seen to its left; these elements are elaborated in Fish Market, Antwerp, an 1839 lithograph after Thomas Shotter Boys, by which time a prominent street lamp (also shown by Bartlett) had been added to somewhat surreal effect.

Turner’s view is continued with an archway to the left on folio 193 recto opposite (D19222), where the main subject shows the wider setting with the cathedral in the distance to the south-east. Het Steen is shown from the River Scheldt on folios 190 recto and 191 recto (D19216, D19218). For other views of Antwerp here and elsewhere, see under folio 188 recto (D19212).

The roofs immediately below possibly continue the scene to the right, but the study below that, of what may be a Neo-Classical building or bridge, remains to be identified. This is complicated by the presence of a study of the Romanesque Basilica of Our Lady in Maastricht, several pages adrift from the main sequence of sketches in and around the Dutch city, which Turner had visited on the way to Antwerp; see under folio 179 verso (D19195). The note beside it is difficult to make out, though it concludes with ‘Mas’ or a close variant, perhaps added retrospectively when the artist added the Antwerp view(s). The church then featured a small belfry on its south-eastern tower, shown here at the centre, which was subsequently replaced by a spire of about the same height. It was presumably drawn to the north-west from the Wyck bank of the River Maas (Meuse); compare two wider views on folio 180 recto (D19196).