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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Rotterdam to Venice Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam, with the Dome of St Dominicus and Tower of St Lawrence 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam, with the Dome of St Dominicus and Tower of St Lawrence’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam, with the Dome of St Dominicus and Tower of St Lawrence 1840
D32265
Turner Bequest CCCXX 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 89 x 149 mm
Partial watermark ‘J H’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘2’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCXX – 2’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Andrew Wilton expanded on Finberg’s basic identification of this drawing, made with the page turned horizontally, as ‘Rotterdam’,1 specifying the churches of St Dominicus and St Dominicus.2 During her wider research on Dutch subjects in the Turner Bequest for the present catalogue, research intern Quirine van der Meer Mohr noted the foreground as ‘the Leuvehaven seen from the Leuvebrug’.3 The bridge no longer stands and the immediate harbour area has changed radically since the Second World War. The domed church of St Dominicus to the north was destroyed and the present Citykerk Het Steiger Sint Dominicus is on a different site nearby; the tower and substantial church of St Lawrence (the Sint Laurensenkerk) survives.
Folio 1 verso opposite (D32264) shows a similar view in slight outline, and the two drawings are the only ones made in the city on this occasion.4 Turner had recorded both churches in his 1835 Rotterdam sketchbook (see Tate D32444, D32446; Turner Bequest CCCXXI 1, 2).5 See under D32264 for other Rotterdam subjects.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1029.
2
Wilton in Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.160.
3
Email to the author, 24 January 2014.
4
See also Powell 1995, pp.65, 81 note 6.
5
As noted in Wilton 1974, p.160.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Leuvehaven, Rotterdam, with the Dome of St Dominicus and Tower of St Lawrence 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-leuvehaven-rotterdam-with-the-dome-of-st-dominicus-and-r1196500, accessed 27 April 2024.