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 Curtained Bed, with a Figure Looking Up c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Figure Looking Up’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 30 Recto:
A Curtained Bed, with a Figure Looking Up c.1834–6
D28828
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 30
Watercolour on white wove paper, 101 x 77 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘30’ top right, ascending vertically (smudged)
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(b) – 30’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned vertically, this appears to show the head of a figure within a curtained bed, looking up to the left as if having just awoken, with the covers pulled up to its chin as shadows seem to loom from the left. Whether intentionally or not, there is something of the dream or vision about it, comparable with the nocturnal scenes of the preceding Romantic generation; compare The Nightmare of 1781 (Detroit Institute of Art) by Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), or The Ghost of a Flea of about 1819–20 (Tate N05889) by William Blake (1757–1827).
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 29 verso opposite (D28827); 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.
1
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.126 no.455.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight offsetting of watercolour to or from folio 31 recto (the unaccessioned recto of D28829).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Figure Looking Up 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-looking-up-r1149057, accessed 25 April 2024.