Joseph Mallord William Turner

With the page turned vertically, Turner depicts a trio of women kneeling, seated and reclining in a wooded setting. They may be bathers on the banks of the River Thames around Richmond upon Thames. There are identified views around there at the beginning of this sketchbook, and others at this end likely to be in the vicinity; see the Introduction.

The artist may have may have stumbled across the scene in the manner of the mythical Actaeon and Diana, and he was always ready to idealise the Thames Valley as a classical Arcadia, hence his calling the women ‘Wood Nymps’ [sic]; compare the bathers in the Hesperides (1) sketchbook of about 1805–8 (Tate D05831–D05832; Turner Bequest XCIII 37 a–38) and the related oil painting View of Richmond Hill and Bridge, exhibited in 1808 (Tate N00557).1 See also the fête champêtre scene inside the back cover (D40965).

Less poetically, below is a study of a figure wading out to manhandle a small boat.