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

Turner had first sketched Northampton’s All Saints Church in 1794, recording its partially obscured west front looking along Gold Street in the Matlock sketchbook (Tate D00218; Turner Bequest XIX 12); an engraving from an untraced watercolour1 of the view was published in 1796 (Tate impression: T05917). In the present drawing, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation and continued a little on folio 18 recto opposite (D22353), Turner included more of the west front, from a closer viewpoint. The subject was identified, possibly in a different hand, among undated manuscript notes by the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in a copy of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2 In this instance Turner was able to adapt his rapid sketch as the backdrop to a subsequent event. Eric Shanes confirmed the subject3 in relation to The Northampton Election, 6 December 1830 of about 1830–1 (Tate T12321),4 not engraved but apparently intended, like many of the Midlands watercolours resulting from the 1830 tour, for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales.

Although Turner indicates the south side of the tower at a narrow angle and the central statue of Charles II above the portico shown left of the clock, implying a viewpoint just south-west of the church at the end of Gold Street, he must have moved opposite Mercer’s Row on the north side of the church to include the elaborate dome and cupola over the nave, directly behind the tower when the west front is viewed head on, but shown here significantly to its left. To the right of the tower is an extension of its own cupola, as Turner ran out of space at the top of the page. In the watercolour the prominent but much simplified dome is shown far to the right of the tower. The latter is a modified survival from the medieval church destroyed by fire in 1675; the rest of the church was rebuilt in classical style between 1676 and 1680, with the Ionic portico added in 1701, echoing Inigo Jones’s lost portico at St Paul’s Cathedral, London.5

The buildings to the left and right do not survive in this form, and in any case were exchanged for largely invented ones (rather like the flats of a stage set) in the watercolour, although a rather generic George Hotel is shown there in more or less the correct juxtaposition at the corner of George Row and Bridge Street on the right. Two anonymous oil versions of a naive but apparently accurate view of the church and the George from the south-west (Northampton Museums and Art Gallery, dated c.1830; Northampton Central Library) make useful comparisons, and confirm that then, as now, the upper part of the tower was of plain brick, rather than the pale stone or stucco indicated in Turner’s watercolour. The small pavilion in front of the south end of the portico in Turner’s views is also shown in these paintings, housing a well or pump. It does not survive; details at the top right may be from the carvings towards its top, as features in Turner’s finished design.

The only other identified Northamptonshire subject from this tour is the medieval Eleanor Cross at Hardingstone, about two miles south of the centre of Northampton; see under folio 23 verso (D22364).