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, with a ?Kneeling Figure Holding the Foot of a Seated Naked Woman c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Dark Interior, with a ?Kneeling Figure Holding the Foot of a Seated Naked Woman’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Recto:
A Dark Interior, with a ?Kneeling Figure Holding the Foot of a Seated Naked Woman c.1834–6
D28834
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 34
Watercolour on white wove paper, 77 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘34’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(b) – 34’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
By selective reworking and lifting of the initial rough washes, Turner has introduced the delicately modelled figure of a seated naked woman at the left, who appears to be extending her foot towards a figure seated or kneeling on the right. Its traditional counterpart may be a mythological bathing theme such as the toilet of Venus or Diana with her attendants. Although developed in a different way, the initial washes seem to have been offset to or from folio 33 verso opposite (D28832). Raphael Rosenberg has given this as an example of Klecksography, or drawings generated by random smudging, in this case starting from a sort of proto-Rorschach mirror image1 (see the overall Introduction to the present grouping).
For a wider discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see elsewhere in the Introduction.
1
See Rosenberg 2007, pp.126–7, 328 note 52.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight offsetting of watercolour to or from folio 35 recto opposite (unaccessioned, its verso being D28835).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Dark Interior, with a ?Kneeling Figure Holding the Foot of a Seated 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-dark-interior-with-a-kneeling-figure-holding-the-foot-of-a-r1149061, accessed 23 September 2024.