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

The page was used both ways up for studies of sailing barges under way, presumably drawn from another craft. The top sketch is relatively detailed, including a note possibly reading ‘Good Run’ beside the leading boat, perhaps approving its rapid progress before the wind. See this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies. In the distance is the north side of a substantial church with a square tower. Its orientation means it is not, as Finberg presumably thought, St Lawrence’s Church at Rotterdam,1 of which there are various sketches looking north-west from the Nieuwe Maas (New Meuse) river (see under folio 35 recto; D18908), but Dordrecht’s Grote Kerk (the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, or Church of Our Lady).

One sequence of Rotterdam views ends with folio 44 recto (D18926). As Turner appears largely to have worked systematically through the sketchbook in the order of its present foliation, it seems likely that he left by river and approached Dordrecht, about eleven miles to the south-east as the crow flies, by a short voyage up the Nieuwe Maas and its tributary the Noord, to where the latter and the Oude Maas (Old Meuse) fork from the Beneden Merwede; the city overlooks this point from the south.

Numerous views of the city follow from its rivers and harbours, often featuring the Grote Kerk; see folio 46 verso opposite, the verso of the present page, folios 48 recto–65 recto, and possibly folio 65 verso (D18930, D18932–D18968). Not recognising Dordrecht, Finberg specified most of them as additional Rotterdam views,2 despite the main buildings and prospects, some recorded in detail, being quite distinct beyond broad similarities of architectural style and setting. For variety, the Dutch Turner scholar Fred Bachrach included a few examples in his book focusing on the artist’s Rotterdam views, albeit correctly distinguishing them.3

The city (locally sometimes ‘Dordt’ and historically ‘Dort’ to English-speakers) is featured in scattered sketches, with shipping on its busy waterways, in the 1817 Dort sketchbook (including Tate D13013, D12997, D13110, D13135, D13143, D13156–D13160, D13162, D13165, D40680–D40681; Turner Bequest CLXII 1a, 9a, 60a, 73a, 77a, 85–87, 88, 89a, and inside the covers.) That book’s overall title is not the artist’s, but was derived subsequently from his annotations using the customary spelling. The contemporary Itinerary Rhine Tour and Guards sketchbooks include studies (respectively Tate D12604, D13253; Turner Bequest CLIX 50, CLXIV 8) for the large-scale oil painting Dort, or Dordrecht, the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),4 showing various vessels with their sails set but motionless against a glowing sky; the city serves as a distant backdrop to the south, as echoed in the first sketch here, with only the Grote Kerk in any detail.

Dort was soon acquired by Turner’s great friend and patron Walter Fawkes and hung at his Yorkshire home, Farnley Hall. As noted in this sketchbook’s Introduction, Turner saw with the seriously ill Fawkes (for the last time, as it transpired) on the eve of setting out; he would often have seen the painting at Farnley, even recording it hanging there in a watercolour (private collection),5 and its associations doubtless loomed large as he approached and revisited the city. See folio 142 verso and under folio 143 recto (D19121–D19122) for Rhine sketches which led to a similarly ambitions painting, as it were a companion piece at one remove, Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening, shown at the Academy in 1826 (Frick Collection, New York);6 it possibly included an indirect visual allusion to the artist’s late friend.

No further works would result from the Dordrecht sketches here, and the city would appear again only briefly in the 1835 Rotterdam sketchbook (Tate D32509–D32513; Turner Bequest CCCXXI 35–37).