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

There are three sketches here, with those above and below made with the page turned vertically. The top view is along the Shropshire Union Canal cutting at Chester, with the Bridge of Sighs below the cupola of the Bluecoat School on Northgate, looking east. The narrow footbridge was built in 1793 to link Northgate Gaol and the Chapel of Little St John (both gone), and was redundant by the time of Turner’s visit, although it survives just to the west of Northgate Bridge;1 the two are perhaps conflated in this slight sketch, but they are clearly differentiated in a similar view on folio 60 recto (D22261), together with one in the opposite direction. Turner’s attention might have been caught by the structure’s name, presumably after its famous counterpart in Venice, which he recorded in 1819 in the Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14388; Turner Bequest CLXXV 39a) and on subsequent visits in 1833 and 1840.2

A comparable viewpoint today is St Martin’s Way, from which later buildings on the left and trees on the right partly obscure the view. Across the central register of the page is a sketch made with the page inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, apparently showing the buildings along the city walls above the south side of the canal, corresponding to the shaded area of the first sketch. For other views of Chester, see under folio 14 verso (D22176). Ian Warrell has compared the motif of the bridge over a gorge to that in a watercolour vignette of the 1830s known as ‘An Italian Castle above a River’ (private collection),3 although the resemblance is presumably fortuitous.

As Warrell has noted, Peveril Castle is in the lower drawing from the south-east.4 The vertical hatching across the distant hills perhaps represents rain. For other views of the castle, Castleton and Peak Cavern, see under folio 1 verso (D22152).