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

With the page turned horizontally, the setting is Rotterdam, as Finberg recognised;1 the Dutch Turner scholar Fred Bachrach defined the site exactly, with the rusticated Baroque façade of the lost Beurs (stock exchange) seen obliquely to the south from the east side of the Kolk basin, houses on the Draaisteeg at the left, the Beursbrug over the entrance to the Blaak canal beyond the Beurs, and houses on the Westnieuwland quay in the right foreground. Above is a larger study of the exchange’s cupola.2

There are loose indications of moored boats by the posts in the foreground. Turner’s numerical inscriptions on the houses are his customary time-saving indications of their fenestration; he did draw a particular detail of two fanlights linked by a further arch, as shown in a meticulous earlier drawing of the same scene by the Rotterdam marine artist Gerrit Groenewegen (1754–1826).3 There is a slighter variant in the 1833 Rotterdam and Rhine sketchbook (Tate D32609; Turner Bequest CCCXXII 36a). The Beurs and Westnieuwland are seen from the east on folio 70 recto (D18977) of the present book.

Although the layout of the city’s central streets and harbours has been broadly preserved, very few buildings, notably St Lawrence’s Church (the Sint-Laurenskerk), survived destruction in May 1940. Both the Kolk and the Blaak have since been filled in, a hangar-like market hall stands on or near the site of the Beurs, and identification is based largely on earlier visual documentation; see under folio 35 recto (D18908) for other views in and around the city in this book and elsewhere.

Technical notes:

There is some scattered brown staining, which has passed through the leaf from the recto (D18920).