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

The main view continues across half of the page to the right, folio 15 recto (D22000), where there is a smaller repetition of the same view. The town is seen to the north-east, apparently from the vicinity of Monument Lane, Lickey (as noted by Turner on the opposite page and deciphered by Dr Bernard Richards as part of unpublished Turner research informed by local knowledge1), with the dome of St Philip’s Church (later Birmingham Cathedral) at the centre of the present page. There is a separate sketch with trees and a building at the top left, possibly as a continuation of the main view.

The subject had been identified as Birmingham 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.2 For other views of Birmingham, see under folio 3 verso (D21980).