From the moment it was exhibited, Turner’s painting Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed made waves. It was the star of the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition of 1818 and the reaction from critics and artists was emphatic. The Morning Chronicle called it “one of the most magnificent pictures ever exhibited”. Turner’s great rival, John Constable, was just as fulsome in his praise. “It was the most complete work of a genius I ever saw,” he later recalled.
As its name suggests, the enormous canvas — nearly 8ft wide — is a study in tranquillity. On a day of flat calm, washed with golden light, it captures the moment when provisions and passengers are loaded from rowing boats onto a ship called the Swan, near the town of Dordrecht in the Netherlands. You can see the north face of its minster in the distance, glowing in the sun, and every part of Turner’s treatment of the subject emphasises the peacefulness of the scene — the quiet sky overhead, the reflective waters of the river below, the ship cast as a halo of light. Looking at it has a restorative power.
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And now you can enjoy it in real life. This magnificent painting was bought by an American in 1966 and usually lives in Yale’s Centre for British Art in Connecticut. It rarely crosses the Atlantic but this year you can see it hanging ten minutes’ walk from that glowing church in Turner’s background. It’s the star of a new exhibition, Water and Light, which runs in the Dordrechts Museum until June 14 (£14.80; dordrechtsmuseum.nl). And no, it’s not coming to the UK afterwards. This is its only European outing.
What you need to know
Where is it? Rotterdam and Dordrecht
Who will love it? Turner fans, culture lovers and coffee drinkers
Insider tip Invest in a £65 Netherlands Museum Pass, which gives you access to more than 400 Dutch museums
That’s excuse enough for an art-themed trip to the Netherlands this spring and I have plenty more. Dordrecht sits — low-rise and lovely — 15 minutes by train from the harbour city of Rotterdam (£10.10 return; ns.nl). And Rotterdam is three and a half hours by Eurostar from London (returns from £78; eurostar.com). It’s an easy train journey from Schiphol airport too — and however you get there, you’ll find the region is blossoming into a cultural hub. A two-day break won’t do it justice. If you’ve got an appetite for world-class art, you’ll need three or four.
JMW Turner’s Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed
Rotterdam is the heart of it, and its new Netherlands Photo Museum is the most exciting place to stay. Opened on February 7 in the up-and-coming waterfront Katendrecht district, it’s home to one of the world’s largest photography collections and it’s crowned not just by a golden lattice of metal but an entire floor of 16 short-stay studios and one-bedroom apartments. Neat, spacious and equipped with all the essentials (barring dishwashers), they’re officially available to rent for a minimum of one week. But they can be had, last minute, for shorter stays. By UK standards the starting price — from £85 a night for two, self-catering — is a steal. Find them under the location Brede Hilledijk on the website of Alphabet Apartments, which manages them (alphabetapartments.com).
Staying above the Netherlands Photo Museum
I’ve just spent a couple of nights in one of the studios and it was a lot more comfortable than my last museum sleepover. That was on a mattress on the floor at one of the Science Museum’s Astronights in London. Admittedly, at the Netherlands Photo Museum you’re not inside the galleries themselves, as you are in South Kensington. But the thought of sleeping on top of one of 6.5 million images is a thrill nevertheless. It helps that entry to the museum’s ground floor is free, effectively making it the buzziest aparthotel lobby you’ll ever lounge in. That’s not just because of the museum’s house blend of strong Brazilian coffee. Next door to its café is a library of several thousand photography books that is open to all. You can’t take them to your apartment — you’ll need to browse at one of the library’s tables instead — but it sure beats the handful of art monographs that usually grace the tables of Europe’s design hotels.
You can now stay above the Netherlands Photo MuseumIris van den Broek
Sadly, upstairs the museum’s galleries play hard to get with their collections. From 6.5 million images, the curators have given us just 100 “icons” of Dutch photography, marshalling them onto a single floor, with two floors above them devoted to storage and conservation and two more beyond that hosting temporary exhibitions (£15; nederlandsfotomuseum.nl). But that’s OK because you can get a powerful photographic hit half a mile along the same disused quay at Fenix, which opened in May last year (£13; fenix.nl/en). This airy gallery, which examines the eternal, unwavering fact of human migration, is another declaration of Rotterdam’s cultural ambition — and is at its most memorable in the room of giant black and white images showing our species on the move.
Café Putaine is one of the best restaurants among the quays and warehouses
Inventive cuisine… and more art
Katendrecht is a great place to refuel too, courtesy of the cafés and restaurants that dot its quays or float on its pontoons, amid a mind-scrambling mix of skyscrapers, former warehouses and well-mannered brick houses. Café Putaine is one of the most delicious, thanks to well-balanced, inventive dishes such as guinea fowl, blackberry, parsleyroot and coffee (mains from £13; restaurantputaine.nl). But don’t take too long over lunch. Just across the Nieuwe Maas river lies the Kunsthal, whose severe modernist exterior gives no hint of the flamboyant exhibitions within. The next big one, from March 27 to August 30, will celebrate the flower in all its forms across 200 exhibits (£16.50; kunsthal.nl).
Enough art already? Sorry, there’s more. You can’t come to the southern Netherlands and not see Johannes Vermeer’s 17th-century masterpiece The Girl with a Pearl Earring. It hangs in the Mauritshuis in the Hague — 30 minutes by train from Rotterdam Centraal (£18; mauritshuis.nl). In which case you may wish to invest in a £65 Netherlands Museum Pass (museum.nl/en), which offers free access to all museums and galleries mentioned here, with the exception of Fenix.
The Fenix Museum in RotterdamIris van den Boek
It’s partly because of this sensory overload that the excursion to Dordrecht is such a treat. Like Rotterdam, it too had a traumatic Second World War but was spared the blanket bombing that flattened its neighbour in 1940. Now life burbles through its narrow streets like a country brook and many of its landmarks recall the quick, fluent pencil marks with which Turner filled his sketchbooks in 1817. He was there, probably for a couple of days, in early September, on his way back from a tour that had included the fields of Waterloo, where two years earlier a bloody battle had brought the Napoleonic Wars to an end. Did he realise straight away that this preparatory work could frame a scene that seemed to capture Europe’s collective sigh of relief? We’ll never know. But there was no mistaking its power when it was done.
Helpfully the curator Quirine van der Meer Mohr has placed a bench a few steps back from the painting. It’s the perfect place to sit down and take a long, deep breath.
Sean Newsom was a guest of Rotterdam Partners (rotterdam.info/en) and stayed in the city as a guest of the Netherlands Photo Museum (nederlandsfotomuseum.nl). Fly or take the train to Rotterdam