J. M. W. Turner at Rochester Cathedral

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Graham Keevill, Cathedral Archaeologist studies two pencil sketches featuring Rochester Cathedral by J. M. W. Turner. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 2021.

The lack ot any significant archaeology at the Cathedral during 2021 gives me the opportunity to write about a subject which has been dear to my heart for many years.

JMW Turner (1775-1851) is of course one of our greatest British artists. For many people his fame is based firmly on his remarkable later paintings which presaged many aspects of modern art. His drawings are probably much less well known but they form a formidable body of work in their own right. Turner visited Rochester and the Medway many times during his annual sketching tours, often with the intention of working the sketches up into larger artworks which could be reproduced as engravings for public sale, a relatively easy way ot providing income. Unsurprisingly the Cathedral and its surroundings were one of Turner's chosen subjects and some of his sketches provide invaluable (in one case probably unique) evidence for the medieval and later buildings o the Cathedral and Priory.

I came across Turner's drawings at Tate Britain while researching a lovely little watercolour from c.1797 by Thomas Girtin showing the north side of the Cathedral with the Castle Keep in the background.1 Tate Britain and the National Gallery house the Turner Bequest, perhaps the world's best and largest collection of his work comprising nearly 300 oil paintings and around 30,000 sketches and watercolours, including 300 sketch-books.2 In November 2017 I had the great pleasure of visiting Tate Britain to look at Turner's sketch-books and individual drawings of Rochester with their prominent depictions of the 'twin peaks of the Cathedral and Castle Keep. Turner's sketching tours involved direct observation and drawing from life, taking care over accuracy where this was important but being more flexible when planning more 'posed' views which might be closely based on specific viewpoints but where the overall composition was more important. In these cases a feature such as a tree might be depicted by just a couple of simple lines and a circle for the crown, almost child-like in simplicity. A rapid sketch in one of the books is exactly of this form but is directly related to the artist's fully worked-up version, engraved for sale.

Turner was careful to show buildings as they appeared, thus helping to confirm the dates of some of the sketches. As the Cathedral underwent significant changes during his lifetime we can date several of his sketches fairly precisely. For example some of the sketches show the Tower with no spire but with four corner pinnacles, reflecting the work carried out by Lewis Nockalls Cottingham in the 1820s. The sketch-books are often dated by years and the approximate period of many individual drawings on separate sheets is also known but it is helpful to have corroboration from the historic buildings Turner included in his views.

We now focus on two drawings of the 1790s and one later watercolour, all on individual sheets. The first features the West Front of the Cathedral; the second shows the South Transept, Tower with spire, and, most importantly, lost buildings south of the Cathedral; and the third (rear cover) shows how the draughtsmanship of his earlier years was succeeded by the extraordinary vision of his later art.3

Rochester: The West Porch of the Cathedral, 1794

View at tate.org

 

The view of the West Front is tantalising in some ways, precisely because it is 'only' a sketch: Turner did not include any more detail than he needed for working up the full drawing. Some areas are shown only in outline while simple annotations were used at various points so that he could work up these areas in the studio. The view looks obliquely across the West Front from the south-west and it is notable that all except one of the turrets flanking the Nave and Aisles are shown without their spirelets. Mid-19th-century photographs confirm the accuracy of this detail and also that his depiction of crenellations to both Aisles and their corner turrets is historically correct and accurate. Archaeologically the most important feature of this drawing is a building shown in front of the south-east corner turret with what seems to be a north-facing gable and a large arch to the west. This is believed to be the medieval Almonry Gate which stood at this point on the edge of the Bishop's Palace complex until the early 19th Century, and this drawing provides one of very few close-up depictions of this important building.

From an archaeological and historical perspective the drawing of the South Transept and Tower with spire is by far the most valuable of the sketches providing (as far as I know) the only close-up view of the west elevation of the Cellarer's Range on the west side of the Cloister. Turner drew from a position just west of Minor Canon Row, in front of Prior's Gate, and his drawing shows several buildings and features which are no longer extant - indeed at least two of them did not survive long into the first decade of the 19th Century so his practice of annotating details of materials and finishes has proved to be very helpful.

Rochester: The Cathedral seen beyond buildings from the south, 1793

View at tate.org

The left side of the drawing includes the elevation of Prior's Gate House in outline but, importantly, with the number "3" as a simple visual reminder of the brickwork used here. Thus where we see this number on other buildings we can be reasonably confident that they were also brick-built, although care is needed as a "3" also appears in the stonework of the South Transept window. Crossing the road we see the Bishop's (or Cellarer's or Cloister) Gate in its correct position and accurately depicted. A wall then runs north-west from the Gatehouse fronting onto the Precincts with a small gate in the middle; it is also annotated with a "3", so presumably it was a brick wall on the same alignment as the current railings. It is possibly Tudor in date and it is a pity it no longer survives.

The drawing is most important, though, for the buildings it shows behind this wall. Firstly a tall range runs north-south immediately behind it. This is the Cellarer's Range, with a tall gable and chimney at the south end, further stacks along the ridge and a crenelated parapet punctured by a pair of gabled dormers, one in Dutch style. Turner has sketched in the apex of a further part-dormer immediately to the right of this but it's not clear whether this was an initial mistake in terms of its position or some form of correction. Another Dutch gable is shown at the north end of the building but a storey lower. It is possible that this surmounted a porch in front of the main range and although there is no numeral on the sketch here to suggest the materials, this surely would have been a stone masonry building. The letter "W" on the porch gable seems to refer to the window or its wood surround; a similar annotation can be seen on Prior's Gate House.

Finally Turner shows a second building, of two storeys under attics, running in front of the South Transept at right-angles to the north end of the Cellarer's Range. It looks as if this was built against the Range, partly overlapping the Dutch gable over the porch. The number "3" again suggests that it was brick-built and a post-medieval date seems likely here - the elevation looks quite Georgian, although this may be a re-casing of an earlier building. It may have been one of the post-Dissolution prebendal houses for Chapter clergy and although this building is shown in some earlier 18th Century long perspective views of Rochester, I believe that this is the only close-up image. The drawing also provides the only detailed view of the outer elevation of the Cellarer's Range and its porch and it complements the drawing of c.1798 by William Alexander (1767-1816) showing the east elevation facing into the Cloister.4 The 2017 radar survey around the Cloister confirmed the existence of both the porch and the added range in front of the South Transept.5

Finally we come to Turner's watercolour of Rochester Bridge, painted in c.1830. He had drawn this from more or less the same position in c. 1794 in almost forensic detail - an important source for our understanding of the medieval bridge.6


?Rochester Castle and Bridge, c.1830

View at tate.org

 

The sketch-books contain several smaller studies which clearly relate to this fully worked-up view. This watercolour could almost be by a different artist, so far had his artistic vision moved on by the 1830s. The bridge is recognisable but the ghostly white shape in the background is puzzling - it might be the Castle Keep or the Cathedral Tower but perhaps this misses the point: Turner's subjects had become light and colour so the bridge, or anything else, was secondary.

Turner's sketches give us good evidence for the appearance of several buildings shortly before they were demolished so he has provided us with invaluable archaeological information as well as wonderful art!

Graham Keevill
Cathedral Archaeologist


Footnotes


The two sketches and the watercolour are © Tate, Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported).

1 Tate reference D36637 (Rochester Cathedral from the North East, with the Castle Beyond, c.1797).

2 www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/history/the-turner-bequest

www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/project-overview-r1109225

3 Tate references D01109 (Rochester: The West Porch of the Cathedral, 1794), D00117 (Rochester: The Cathedral Seen beyond Buildings from the South, ?1793) and D25474 (?Rochester Castle and Bridge, c. 1830).

4 Page 19 in J Philip McAleer, Rochester Cathedral: The West Range of the Cloister, Friends of Rochester Cathedral Report 1992/93 p. 13-25.

5 Graham Keevill, Radar Survey of the Cloister Area at Rochester Cathedral, Friends of Rochester Cathedral Report 2017/2018 p.11-18.

6 Tate reference D00159 (Rochester: The Cathedral, Castle and Bridge, 1794).

Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 2021.

Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Reports

The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.

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