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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Woodcock Shooting Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Life Study of a Female Figure c.1812-13

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Life Study of a Female Figure’ c.1812-13
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 116 Verso:
Life Study of a Female Figure c.1812–13
D09198
Turner Bequest CXXIX 116a
Watercolour on white wove paper, 178 x 110 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Gerald Wilkinson describes this as: ‘A lugubrious watercolour nude with a red face... – perhaps another wet-day diversion? The lighting and the pose do not suggest the life-room.’1 Selby Whittingham suggests that the sitter might be Sarah Danby, with whom Turner had an association from the later 1790s.2

David Hill
October 2008

1
Wilkinson 1974, p.142.
2
Whittingham 1994, p.69; Jean Golt, ‘Danby, Sarah’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.71.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Life Study of a Female Figure c.1812–13 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2008, 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-life-study-of-a-female-figure-r1146921, accessed 28 April 2024.