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

With the page turned horizontally, there are various interrelated sketches from the River IJ off Amsterdam. Seen to the north at the centre left, the building among trees is the Tolhuis (tollhouse) on the undeveloped Volewijck peninsula, beside the southern Willemsluis entrance to what was by then the Noordhollandsch Kanaal, as shown in a watercolour of about 1767 by Jan Chip (Stadsarchief Amsterdam).1 What is now the Amsterdam-Noord district of the city has since been much developed and extended on reclaimed land, and the present Tolhuis on Buiksloterweg is a later structure. The building is shown with the city in the distance to the south-west on the recto (D19060).

At the top left, a boat sails past a windmill; it is unclear whether these elements are continuous with the scene at the top right, with what seems to be a lantern hung from a post (compare folio 118 verso; D19073) on the shore near a beached boat, and the ‘Sea’ marked in the distance, indicating the easterly route along the IJ to the southern end of the Zuider Zee, now the IJmeer end of the Markermeer, by which Amsterdam’s shipping accessed the North Sea at that time, as well as by the Noordhollandsch Kanaal. Below to the right are further studies of boats under sail.

See under folio 81 recto (D18999) for other views in and around Amsterdam in this book and elsewhere, and the sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.