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

An anomaly in a sketchbook devoted almost entirely to architectural and topographical views, this heavily shaded study depicts a reclining female figure. It is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. As Cecilia Powell posited, Turner possibly executed this sketch during his stay in Rome in 1828, when he ‘frequented the studios of a number of British artists [...] many of them sculptors’.1 The study, Powell added, may depict one of the models Turner encountered during one such studio visit. Citing the present work, David Solkin suggested that Turner’s ‘taste for highly sensual imagery’ may have prompted him to copy a Titian-inspired Venus by the Dutch-born Venetian painter Lambert Sustris (c.1515/20–c.1570) during his second stay in Italy.2 Compare Turner’s ambitious oil painting in this mode, a Reclining Venus (Tate N05498)3 begun in Rome but left largely unfinished.