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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Tower of the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, from the Bomkade Quay, with Houses and a Harbour Crane 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tower of the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, from the Bomkade Quay, with Houses and a Harbour Crane’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Verso:
The Tower of the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, from the Bomkade Quay, with Houses and a Harbour Crane 1825
D18962
Turner Bequest CCXIV 62a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the subject is not, as Finberg thought, Rotterdam1 (see under folio 35 recto; D18908), but Dordrecht, as identified by the Dutch Turner Scholar Fred Bachrach. He noted the central element as the Gothic tower of Dordrecht’s Grote Kerk, surrounded by ‘random architectural details and [a] harbour-crane’,2 presumably the vertical feature with a rope or chain to the right of the church, likely enlarged from the blank shape below. The elements at the bottom right are perhaps quayside fittings.
The sketches are swiftly rendered, with the church drawn from the Bomkade off the Oude Maas (Old Meuse) river, looking east. The elements either side of the tower are presumably nearby houses, which are not readily identifiable; the façades now lining the small Bomhaven basin and the adjacent Leuvehaven and Maartensgat mostly appear to be later, albeit in similar vernacular styles. Compare a similar prospect in the 1817 Dort sketchbook (Tate D13159; Turner Bequest CLXII 86a).
See under folio 47 recto (D18931) for other views in and around the city in this book and elsewhere, many of which feature the Grote Kerk, of which there are detailed studies from the Maartensgat on folio 63 recto opposite (D18963).

Matthew Imms and Quirine van der Meer Mohr
September 2020

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.653.
2
See Bachrach 1974, p.58.

How to cite

Matthew Imms and Quirine van der Meer Mohr, ‘The Tower of the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, from the Bomkade Quay, with Houses and a Harbour Crane 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-tower-of-the-grote-kerk-dordrecht-from-the-bomkade-quay-r1202314, accessed 16 July 2025.