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 (1) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed c.1834–6
D28827
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 29a
Watercolour on white wove paper, 77 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This barely developed composition remains enigmatic. Like various others on adjacent pages it may represent the curtains of a bed and the shadowy space within.

For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
When this sketchbook was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1974, according to the catalogue it was open at ‘f.29v Two Figures Watching a Sleeping Woman ... f.30r A Couple in a Bed’1 but, despite the specified folio numbers, these titles in no way correspond to the slight subjects on this page and folio 30 recto opposite (D28828); rather, they apparently describe the more fully worked themes on folios 35 verso and 36 recto (D28835, D28837), and it is assumed here that those were the pages exhibited.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

1
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.126 no.455.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed 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-dark-interior-or-curtained-bed-r1149056, accessed 26 April 2024.