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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Petworth House: Musicians in the Red Room 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Petworth House: Musicians in the Red Room’ 1827
Petworth House: Musicians in the Red Room 1827
D22696
Turner Bequest CCXLIV 34
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 141 x 189 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 34’ 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.
The setting for this scene is Petworth’s Red Room; for a detailed study of the interior and further information about the room, see the entry for Tate D22683 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 21). In the background the red of the walls is visible, as are a number of tall, framed paintings: these must represent some of the Van Dyck portraits discussed in the entry for D22683. As the Turner scholar Ian Warrell has noted, the musicians seen in the foreground appear to be entertaining the dinner party that can be glimpsed through the doorway in the next room, the Carved Room.1 Turner’s colour palette, darker and more limited than in many of the Petworth gouache studies, reflects the evening setting, some of the musicians shown as silhouettes.
1
Butlin, Luther and Warrell 1989, p.143.
Technical notes:
The paper is torn in the bottom right corner.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘13 | a’ near centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXLIV 34’ bottom left.

Elizabeth Jacklin
February 2019

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Petworth House: Musicians in the Red Room 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-musicians-in-the-red-room-r1209127, accessed 10 September 2025.