Joseph Mallord William Turner

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).