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

Turner filled this page with multiple panoramas of distant coastal terrain with harbour infrastructure and shipping; the sketches on the bottom half of the page are inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated. The port in the drawing second from the top is Southampton, identifiable by the distinctive pair of medieval spires belonging to the Churches of St Michael and St Mary. As outlined under the entry for folio 11 recto (D23541; Turner Bequest CCLII 11), the town recurs at different points throughout the volume. Southampton offered a regular steam packet service to the Channel Islands, whose towns and coastal regions are the subject of extensive study in this sketchbook.1