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

According to Ian Warrell, this sketch likely depicts Custom House at London, rebuilt by David Laing between 1812–7 and expanded by Sir Robert Smirke to include a riverside façade in 1825.1 Turner produced a finished watercolour of this building within the Views in London project after 1825 (Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada) (Tate impression T06069). ² That view includes the cupola of St Paul’s Cathedral which appears to be represented in the present colour sketch at centre. None of the other monuments in the finished design is featured: such as the steeple of Wren’s St Magnus-the-Martyr or the Monument, though this may be due to a certain amount of topographic licence.

Warrell proposes that the present sketch and one other (Tate D25378; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 255) relate to the watercolour of Custom House because of the angle at which Turner depicts the building. Certainly the ships’ masts, prolific in the final design, are suggested in this sketch in an assemblage of cruciform lines. There is a suggestion of foreground incident implied through quick dashes and daubs of wash, but this remains very undeveloped.

Eric Shanes has also suggested that this sketch could depict the Thames at the site of the old Greenwich Hospital.3

For other of Turner’s works which feature the Custom House see the Hesperides (1) sketchbook of between 1805 and 1806 (Tate D05786–D05789; Turner Bequest XCIII 13–5); the Scotland and London sketchbook of about 1820 (Tate D13825–D13826; Turner Bequest CLXX 10–11) and the Tabley No.3 sketchbook of about 1825 (Tate D07039, D07041, D07074, D07076–D07077, D07082–D07083; Turner Bequest CV 40a, 41a, 62, 63–63a, 66–66a). See also two loose ‘colour beginnings’ depicting the Custom House (Tate D25222, D25294; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 100, 172).