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 Naked Woman c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, ?with a Naked Woman’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Verso:
A Curtained Bed, ?with a Naked Woman c.1834–6
D28934
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 36
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 barely developed setting is a curtained bed, as shown by comparison with numerous other compositions in this book. The pale, rounded shapes in the middle may have been reserved for the form of a naked woman within.
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 ‘36’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 36’; it bears some watercolour offsetting near the gutter and elsewhere from folio 35 verso (D28932). There is some offsetting from the present page at the gutter and elsewhere on the unaccessioned recto of folio 37 opposite (its verso being D28936).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, ?with a Naked Woman 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-naked-woman-r1149011, accessed 25 April 2024.