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 Man and Woman in the Marble Hall ('The Backgammon Players') 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Petworth House: A Man and Woman in the Marble Hall ('The Backgammon Players')’ 1827
Petworth House: A Man and Woman in the Marble Hall (‘The Backgammon Players’) 1827
D22689
Turner Bequest CCXLIV 27
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 141 x 192 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 27’ 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 three colour studies of Petworth’s Marble Hall, which still served as the house’s main entrance at the time of his visit.1 The room, in which Lord Egremont had received the allied sovereigns in opposition to Napoleon’s France in 1814, boasts a distinctive black and white marble floor: this is depicted in another study catalogued in this section (Tate D22778; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 116), where the room is seen in use by billiard players. The present study, which has been known as ‘The Backgammon Players’ since it was first catalogued by A.J. Finberg in 1909,2 shows a man and a woman playing a board game, perhaps backgammon, at a red-topped table. The room’s panelling is loosely indicated in brushes of brown as a backdrop, while our attention is drawn to the active nature of the foreground figures.
For a further study showing the Marble Hall, see Tate D22744 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 82).
1
Rowell, Warrell and Brown 2002, p.89.
2
Finberg 1909, II, p.744.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘10 | a’ near centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXLIV 27’ bottom left.

Elizabeth Jacklin
February 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Petworth House: A Man and Woman in the Marble Hall (‘The Backgammon Players’) 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-man-and-woman-in-the-marble-hall-the-backgammon-players-r1209122, accessed 05 April 2026.