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

With the page turned horizontally, the main view shows Amsterdam’s IJ riverfront, with moored boats off buildings and trees. At the centre is the Baroque Zeerecht or Zeeregt (‘sea law’) water bailiff’s office, with its hipped roof; it does not survive, but is shown from similar angles in an 1805 engraving after H. Schoute, Gezicht van het Zeeregt aan den Kamper-Steiger, tot Amsterdam, and a colour lithograph of about 1845 after Cornelis de Kruyff, Vue d’Amsterdam: Het Zeeregt en Kamperhoofd / Le quai dit Zeeregt ou Kamperhoofd.

As shown on maps of the time, it stood near the Schreierstoren (see the recto; D19047) on what is now the Prins Hendrikkade quay, north-east of the Nieuwe Brug (see folios 85 verso and 122 verso; D19008, D19081) at the entrance to the Damrak canal, near the later Heilige Nicolaas basilica. The riverfront has since been extensively developed, with the Westerdok and Oosterdok, the Victorian railway station and tower blocks. The Nieuwe Brug was likely the viewpoint, used again for the slight south-west view down the Damrak on folio 106 recto opposite (D19049).

Turner would have looked eastwards for the main view here and then turned south to introduce the detail of elaborate Damrak gables at the top. The nearer survives, with balustrades and reclining figures either side of a cartouche surmounted by a crown, bearing the wording ‘AN 17 40 NO | OOST VRJES LANT’, as partly transcribed by Turner, who may also have written a ‘W’ to indicate white stucco. The other building (assuming it was the one immediately to the right, as the drawing implies) now lacks a gable, which may have been lettered ‘G S’. See under folio 81 recto (D18999) for other views in and around the city in this book and elsewhere.