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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Petworth House: A Figure in a Bed with Blue Curtains 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Petworth House: A Figure in a Bed with Blue Curtains’ 1827
Petworth House: A Figure in a Bed with Blue Curtains 1827
D22731
Turner Bequest CCXLIV 69
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 145 x 193 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 69’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of a large group of separate studies, most of which were made in gouache and watercolour on blue paper, associated with a visit to Petworth House in West Sussex, the home of the third Earl of Egremont. For more information, see the Introduction to this section.
Turner made numerous studies of the bedrooms at Petworth during his 1827 visit; for more information and a list see the entry for Tate D22677 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 15). The room shown here includes a blue four poster bed and a corner fireplace. With these details and the possible presence on the left of an ‘inlaid octagon stand’, Christopher Rowell has identified this room using the 1837 inventory of the house as that described as the ‘Next Room over Carved Room’, now called the ‘Buff Bedroom’.1
Although the figure shown lying in the bed is only distantly seen, the glimpses of flesh and apparent pile of carelessly removed clothing on the left imply an erotic element; whether the scene reflects a real sexual encounter or is the result of Turner’s imaginings is unknown. A number of the other studies catalogued in this section contain similarly intimate subject matter, and Ian Warrell suggested the present study represents the culmination of a sequence of drawings, possibly all showing the same sexual encounter (the others are Tate D22745, D22741 and D22732; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 83, 79 and 70).2 Whether this grouping is indeed best considered as a small erotic series remains unclear: essentially, like the vast majority of the Petworth studies, the sheets are private works, whether recollections or imaginings, and their exact function and any narrative element remains rather mysterious.
It has been argued that Petworth’s bedrooms again became the setting for erotic sketches in relation to two slightly later ‘Colour Studies’ sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXCI b and c), which have been linked to the Petworth’s furniture and fireplaces,3 however, it is unclear if these later sheets can be associated with Petworth at all. For more information, see Matthew Imms’s Introduction to the ‘Erotica and Improvisations c.1834–6’ section within the present catalogue.
1
Rowell, Warrell and Brown 2002, p.164.
2
Warrell 2002, p.22.
3
Butlin, Luther and Warrell 1989, pp.146, 147.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘26 | l’ near centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXLIV 69’ bottom left.

Elizabeth Jacklin
February 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Petworth House: A Figure in a Bed with Blue Curtains 1827’, catalogue entry, February 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/petworth-house-a-figure-in-a-bed-with-blue-curtains-r1209141, accessed 16 July 2025.