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

As discussed under the distant view of Rotterdam on folio 92 verso opposite (D19022), Turner likely left the city by boat for a journey of about eight miles north-north-west along the Rotterdamse Schie and Delftse Schie waterways, to the small city of Delft. In the top sketch here, beyond a small waterside building (perhaps a pumphouse or one of the city’s lost gatehouses), the spire and pinnacles of the Oude Kerk and the simpler outline of the spire of the Nieuwe Kerk are seen beyond sailing boats.

Exactly the same scene is shown in the 1817 Dort sketchbook (Tate D13038; Turner Bequest CLXII 22a), where the spires are also seen from the opposite direction on D13039 (CLXII 23).1 The second sketch on the present page is slighter in terms of the setting, focusing on sailing boats juxtaposed with a windmill in the foreground; and the third is a study of a boat in isolation, with a curving shape to its right possibly recording the profile of its hull. See this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.

The spires are seen again from various angles on the verso and folio 94 recto (D19024–D19035), before Turner continued towards along the Vliet canal past The Hague (Den Haag) towards Leiden; see under folio 94 verso for that stage (D19026), where Delft is seen in the distance from the north. The only other possible view of the city is a small sketch labelled ‘Oud Kirk’ (sic) in the earlier Dort book (Tate D13108; Turner Bequest CLXII 59a), tentatively suggested by Finberg as showing Delft,2 although the term ‘Oude Kerk’ (‘old church’) is generic, and the sketch seems out of sequence with others in the area; its subject awaits confirmation.