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 Man and Woman Embracing c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing c.1834–6
D28846
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 42
Watercolour on white wove paper, 77 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘42’ top left, upside down (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(b) – 42’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, within the darkness of a curtained bed a man and woman embrace as they look down with their faces cheek to cheek in a potentially tender or melancholy image; it is unclear whether the pale shapes among the bedclothes in the foreground are intended as another figure or figures. Gerald Wilkinson has described this as the ‘interior climax of the sequence’ of erotic subjects in this sketchbook: ‘Here is no orgasm of primary colours, but instead a complex of shadows enclosing two figures, crouching together, who seem to stare ... but we cannot quite see.’1
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this book, see the Introduction.
When this sketchbook was shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1966, the exhibited pages were not specified in the catalogue, and two double page spreads were reproduced: this and folio 41 verso opposite (D28844), and folios 35 verso–36 recto (D28835, D28837).
1
Wilkinson 1975, p.76.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Man and Woman Embracing 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-man-and-woman-embracing-r1149069, accessed 25 April 2024.