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

Turned horizontally, the page comprises a main view with extensions to the left and right above, forming a panorama of Antwerp on the east bank of the River Scheldt, centred on the soaring asymmetrical towers of the Gothic cathedral, the only readily identifiable building in the initial view.

Along the top (outer) edge, the scene is continued to the left, with a swiftly rendered sailing ship off the city’s harbour area in the distance, where the ‘x’ likely marks a windmill. Advancing southwards, the Baroque spire of the Sint-Pauluskerk (St Paul’s) is annotated with a scrawled phrase, tentatively read by Finberg as ‘Eglise Le Presquisle (?)’;1 this may simply be a phonetic attempt at ‘église paroissiale’ (parish church). To the right again, the turrets of the medieval Het Steen fortress, not far north-west of the cathedral, are shown above the waterfront; there are studies from around it on folio 192 verso and 193 recto (D19221–D19222). The significance of the inscription above it, plausibly rendered by Finberg as ‘Maison Vicent’, is unclear.

Above right of the main view is a continuation to the right, with an elevating ophaalbrug-type bridge labelled ‘St Jean’, indicating the entrance to the short Canal St-Jean, south-west of the cathedral. It has since been filled in but is commemorated in the equivalent Dutch place-name Sint-Jansvliet, where two short parallel streets lead to a small square. Folio 198 recto (D19232) appears to include detailed views of the bridge and canal basin. To its right is the lost tower of St Michael’s Abbey, shown in more detail and labelled on the verso (D19219); it then stood north of the riverside Arsenal, about where Arsenaalstraat now meets the Sint-Michielskaai.

The present view, with its relatively uncommon hatching across the west front of the cathedral suggesting shadow and thus atmosphere, perhaps informed Turner’s oil painting of Van Goyen Looking out for a Subject, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1833 (Frick Collection, New York);2 despite its unspecified setting, it clearly shows the cathedral, albeit now brightly lit, in the background of a windswept, choppy river view, one of several around that time paying tribute in style and subject to seventeenth-century Dutch marine painting.3 Additionally or alternatively, he may have referred back further to the 1817 Dort sketchbook, where the cathedral appears at the right-hand edge of a double-page view (Tate D13007–D13008; Turner Bequest CLXII 6a– 7) corresponding to the left-hand part of the main view here and its continuation downriver. Although he admired Turner, the similarity of the viewpoint in Richard Eurich’s busy 1939 painting Antwerp (Tate N05344) is presumably fortuitous. Despite various tower blocks and other changes, the view remains comparable today.

There is a detailed study of the spires from within the city on folio 195 recto (D19226); for Turner’s other views of Antwerp here and elsewhere, see under folio 188 recto (D19212).