J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This drawing most likely reads as a reclining figure with the head on the right, despite the positioning of the stamped Turner Bequest number, inverted at the top left in relation to the drawing when viewed this way. Within a tentatively sketched outline of red chalk, Turner has worked red and white chalk into the grey ground to create a peach-coloured skin tone across the figure, applying white highlights to give the sense of three-dimensional form. A swift zig zag of black chalk denotes his model’s hair while her facial features are only nominally sketched in, and rendered even more difficult to read as a result of smudging in that area. Turner was possibly frustrated in his attempt to describe the figure’s left foot, having hatched over its outline.

Ian Warrell has suggested that the model in this and two other sketches from this sketchbook (D35257–D35258; CCCLIII 18, 19) is Sophia Booth, Turner’s landlady in Margate and companion of his later years.1

Technical Notes:

Spots of the pigment used to prepare the ground have formed across the page, likely as a result of damage in the Tate Gallery flood of 1928. This leaf is mounted.

Verso:

Blank; some offsetting in black chalk.