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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the east end of the medieval Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, is seen along Priory Row. Turner’s viewpoint is north of the medieval St Michael’s Cathedral, where the modern Coventry Cathedral now runs north-south, and tall trees stand east of the church. The church’s west end is apparently seen on folio 13 recto (D22343).

For other views of Coventry, see folios 10 verso, 11 verso, 12 recto, 13 verso, 14 recto and verso, 15 recto and verso, 16 recto and verso–17 recto, 25 verso–26 recto, 26 verso–27 recto and verso (D22338, D22340, D22341, D22344–D22351, D22368, D22369, D22370, D22371, D22372). There is a single view of the city from the south in the contemporary Kenilworth sketchbook (Tate D22051, D22052; Turner Bequest Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 40a–41).

Turner’s watercolour Coventry of about 1832 (British Museum, London),1 engraved in 1833 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impression: T06105), was based in particular on D22368–D22369 and D22370–D22371. This vision of ‘a kind of “celestial city”’2 is characterised by the three spires of Holy Trinity, St Michael’s and Christchurch, which feature in various juxtapositions Turner’s sketches as he skirted the centre of the city. The spires survive, though only Holy Trinity is fully intact, with St Michael’s an empty shell (adjoining Basil Spence’s new cathedral) and Christchurch an isolated tower following the severe bombing of the medieval city in November 1940 and subsequently. Later commercial and industrial development and the raised inner Ringway have left little else of what Turner would have seen unaffected.3