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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the page shows numerous views around the lower reaches and North Sea estuary of the Nieuwe Maas (New Meuse), with shipping under sail and marker buoys in the shallow waters. The Dutch Turner scholar Fred Bachrach has comprehensively described the various subjects here and on folio 30 recto opposite (D18898).1 Although the successive studies are arranged in similar narrow horizontal bands, the two pages are independent, as those on D18898 are all the other way up.

There are two key landmarks. The plain Stenen Baak (‘stone beacon’) lighthouse still stands on the south bank of what is now the Brielse Meer, at that time the Brielse Maas reach of the Nieuwe Maas; there have since been substantial changes to the waterways between Rotterdam and the sea. The other tower belongs to the Sint-Catharijnekerk in Brielle, about two miles to the south-east. The town is also known as Den Bril, and as Brill in English. As well as D18898, where the two towers are shown in more detail, see also folio 30 verso, possibly folios 33 verso and 34 recto, the verso of the latter, and folio 35 recto (D18899, D18905–D18908).

Turner had sketched in the area in the 1817 Dort book (Tate D13148–D13152; Turner Bequest CLXII 81–83), and exhibited the large marine oil painting Entrance of the Meuse: Orange-Merchant on the Bar, Going to Pieces; Brill Church bearing S.E. by S., Masensluys E. by S. at the Royal Academy in 1819 (Tate N00501).2 There are compositional studies in the 1818 Farnley sketchbook (D12047, D12096, D12098; CLIII 41, 89a, 90a) and another in the Hints River book (D10591; CXLI 3a). He again noted bearings in relation to some of the prospects on the present page and D18898. See the present sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.

Technical notes:

There is some scattered staining to the pages between folios 26 recto and 35 recto (D18890–D18908).