Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Woman Looking Out

c.1834–6

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Colour Studies (2) Sketchbook [Finberg CCXCI (c)]
Medium
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 79 × 101 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D28920
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 29

Catalogue entry

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, within an elemental, billowing setting probably indicating a curtained bed (as so often in this book) the pale figure of a naked woman, apparently kneeling, peers out at the viewer from behind the hanging at the left.
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 ‘29’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 29’; it bears some watercolour offsetting from folio 28 verso (D28918), particularly at the gutter. There is also some slight offsetting from the present page at the gutter of the unaccessioned recto of folio 30 opposite (its verso being D28922).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

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