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

With the page turned horizontally, this carefully executed drawing shows Rotterdam’s St Lawrence’s Church (the Sint-Laurenskerk), seen to the north-west beyond the Kolk basin, as Finberg recognised.1 The Dutch Turner scholar Fred Bachrach identified the houses as being on the north side of the Grote Markt and Middensteiger with the long, low waterfront Korenbeurs (corn exchange) on the right. ² At the top centre is a study of two milkmaids (or one in successive actions) with their pails; the one on the right appears to have a yoke across her shoulders. Compare the figure on folio 131 recto (D19098).

There are slighter views in the same direction on folios 42 verso and 43 verso (D18923, D18925). See also folios 68 verso and 70 recto opposite (D18974, D18977), showing the quays in the right and left foreground along the Kolk from the same or similar viewpoints around the Draaibrug. The three pages thus effectively form a panoramic survey; the overall prospect is seen in outline on folio 44 recto (D18926), and again in more detail in the 1835 Rotterdam sketchbook (Tate D32448, D32450; Turner Bequest CCCXXI 3 [verso]–4).

Although the layout of the city’s central streets and harbours has been broadly preserved, very few buildings (notably St Lawrence’s) survived destruction in May 1940, the Kolk has been filled in, 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. See this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many figure scenes, and studies of individuals, their costume and headgear.