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

Turner used the page horizontally both ways up for a slightly chaotic range of studies; as Gerald Wilkinson observed, ‘a street market and some unusual forms catch his eye’ here.1 Wilkinson followed Finberg’s tentative identification of the distant turreted building in the scene at the top left (read with the gutter at the top) as ‘the Groote Hout-Poort, Haarlem’,2 but the setting, like those on adjacent pages, is Amsterdam, and there are no identified views of Haarlem from the present tour. See the 1817 Dort sketchbook (Tate D13072, D13125; Turner Bequest CLXII 41a, 68) for confirmed views of gateways there; D13125 may show its Grote Houtpoort, but in any case it was demolished in 1824, before this visit.3

The scene actually shows the freestanding late-medieval Waag gatehouse, which survives on Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarkt. The building had been a weighing house for imported goods and housed various guilds, including that of the surgeons, who commissioned Rembrandt’s celebrated 1632 painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (Mauritshuis, The Hague), set in the anatomy theatre within the building, which is now an events venue.4 Although on a small scale, the sketch is precise enough to determine that the south side is shown from along the tree-lined Kloveniersburgwal canal (see also folios 100 recto and 101 recto; D19037, D19039), with the octagonal pointed roof over the centre of the building continued over the gutter onto folio 82 recto opposite (D19001). The Waag is seen from the north in a more detailed sketch on folio 100 verso (D19040).

The figures in the foreground appear to be on the canal’s eastern quay, likely at a market. This was presumably where Turner made about two dozen individual studies of pots and pans at the bottom left, with annotations concerning their colours and glazed finishes. Roughly divided by vertical pencil lines, the other way up at the right there are larger studies of men and women and notes on their costumes, including some women doing their ‘Washing at the Canal’. Compare the similar range of studies on folio 83 verso (D19004).

See under folio 81 recto (D18999) for other views in and around the city in this book and elsewhere, and this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many figure scenes, with studies of individuals, their costume and headgear, and also numerous studies of kitchenware and other small items.