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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Erotica and Improvisations c.1834-6 > Colour Studies (2) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Verso:
?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28918
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 28
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the perfunctory washes here suggest the setting of a curtained bed only by comparison with more developed compositions elsewhere in the book. The pale, swelling shapes above the centre appear to indicate a human presence.
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
Technical notes:
The unaccessioned, blank recto is numbered in red ink ‘28’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 28’. There is slight watercolour offsetting from the present page to the unaccessioned recto of folio 29 opposite (its verso being D28920), particularly near the gutter.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-curtained-bed-with-a-figure-or-figures-r1149003, accessed 18 April 2024.