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

Turner has worked on top of a grey ground in red and white chalk and pencil to create this sketch of a woman’s head in profile, possibly while she is asleep. The pencil outline shows Turner carefully describing his model’s features; pencil lines show her hair tied in a bun behind her head. A combination of white and red chalk delineates her ear, eye, nostril and lips, while white chalk is used more broadly to add contours.

According to Ian Warrell, the model here and in two other drawings from this sketchbook (D35256 and D35257; CCCLIII 17, 18) is perhaps Sophia Booth, who, ran a lodging house that Turner stayed in when visiting Margate and was his companion in later life.1 She appears here to be asleep, as is also the case in another drawing potentially of Sophia Booth (Tate D36116; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 269).

Turner cataloguer Matthew Imms2 has suggested a comparison with a small watercolour brown study of a woman’s thrown-back head (private collection),3 described by Andrew Wilton as showing ‘erotic overtones.4 The parallel is more evident if the present drawing is read vertically, as reproduced by Warrell, who described it as ‘uncharacteristically for Turner, ... a large portrait study’ with the ‘mouth agape, as though she has fallen asleep’.5

Technical Notes:

In common with others in this sketchbook, the leaf is loose of its binding. Spots of the pigment used to prepare the ground have formed in the top left-hand corner, likely as a result of damage in the Tate Gallery flood of 1928.

Verso:

There is a rudimentary sketch of an eye in red and black chalk. Offsetting of black watercolour and chalk across the leaf and patches of discolouration at edges are probably results of the 1928 Tate flood.