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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Erotica and Improvisations c.1834-6 > Colour Studies (2) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Figure or Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Figure or Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28908
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 23
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, beyond a broad bed curtain the pale figure of a naked woman appears to lie prone within. There may be a hint of a companion beyond her.
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 ‘23’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 23’; it bears slight watercolour offsetting from folio 22 verso (D28906). There is some offsetting from the present page, particularly near the gutter, on the unaccessioned recto of folio 24 opposite (its verso being D28910).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Figure or Figures c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-curtained-bed-with-a-naked-figure-or-figures-r1148998, accessed 19 April 2024.