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

Three church towers from different parts of Birmingham are brought together here, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. On the left are the classical spire, tower and portico of Christ Church; demolished in 1899,1 it stood on the site of Victoria Square, latterly west of the Town Hall and south of the Art Gallery. There is a detail of its weathervane at the top left. At the centre and lower right are the Baroque cupola, dome and tower and the main body of St Philip’s Church (later Birmingham Cathedral), built to Thomas Archer’s design between 1711 and 1725;2 Turner has only drawn the first of the seven bays along its flat south side, noting ‘7’ at this point, before moving a little to the right to record the apsidal east end. As part of unpublished Turner research informed by local knowledge, Dr Bernard Richards identified the building at the top right as the Gothic St George’s Hockley, north-west of central Birmingham, seen from the south;3 it was built to a design by Thomas Rickman in 1819 and demolished in 1961.4

The overall subject had been confirmed as Birmingham (identifying ‘the centre one’ as St Philip’s) by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.5 For other Birmingham views, see under folio 3 recto (D22327).

Technical notes:

This leaf is affected by the extensive pale brown, mottled staining which extends throughout this particular gathering (folios 31–42; D22379–D22402) and also folios 30 and 43 recto and verso (D22377, D22378, D22403, D22404), as discussed in the Technical notes to the sketchbook’s Introduction.