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

The view is north up the eastern shore of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour, from the Point. The note apparently reading ‘Quebec Baths’ refers to the building still standing as Quebec House on the waterfront off Bath Square, north of the Round Tower; it was built by public subscription for a form of indoor sea bathing, with pipes channelling fresh seawater inside from the harbour with each tide.1 Turner had drawn and noted it in the distance from the other direction in the course of a sustained survey of Portsmouth and Gosport, probably in 1824, in the London Bridge and Portsmouth sketchbook (Tate D17944; Turner Bequest CCVI 16a).

The feature in the distance here is apparently the semaphore tower at the naval dockyard (described in the introduction to the London Bridge and Portsmouth book), with the masts of warships moored in the harbour. Turner was presumably at Portsmouth on this occasion in the course of travelling to or from the Isle of Wight (see under folio 2 recto; D20735), and had time to make studies of several aspects of the area, on folios 22 verso, 23 verso, 24 verso, 31 verso, 37 verso, and 38 recto and verso (D20766, D20768, D20770, D20777, D20788–D20790; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 22, 23, 24, 29, 35a, 36, 36a).