Joseph Mallord William Turner

Studies of Two Recumbent Nude Figures

1798

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Dynevor Castle Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 95 × 135 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D01585
Turner Bequest XL 73

Catalogue entry

The studies, drawn with the page turned horizontally and the gutter at the bottom, apparently relate to the composition sketched on folio 8 verso (D01476; Turner Bequest XL 8a). Compare also the foreground figures in The Fifth Plague of Egypt, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 (Indianapolis Museum of Art).1 The left-hand male figure is reminiscent of the dead youth in the centre foreground of the famous painting of The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven) by Richard Wilson (1713–1782), engraved by William Woollett in 1761. The half-obliterated figure on the right is probably female.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.10–12 no.13, pl.10 (colour).

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