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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Midlands 1830 > Birmingham and Coventry Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Head of a Woman in a Bonnet or Mob Cap c.1830

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Head of a Woman in a Bonnet or Mob Cap’ c.1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Verso:
The Head of a Woman in a Bonnet or Mob Cap c.1830
D22342
Turner Bequest CCXL 12a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 68 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Andrew Wilton has related this sketch, made with the page turned vertically, and that on the verso (D22341) to the possible study on folio 7 recto (D22333) for the oil painting Jessica, exhibited in 1830 (Tate T03887; displayed at Petworth House, West Sussex),1 as perhaps ‘initial ideas for this or other works of the same kind’.2
Ian Warrell describes the drawings here and on the recto (D22341) as ‘a couple of portrait studies of young women, possibly Turner’s travelling companions, demonstrating his susceptibility to female charms’, comparing the sketches to one in the Arundel and Shoreham sketchbook (Tate D22872; Turner Bequest CCXLV 54a),3 inscribed ‘Brown Eyes’.
For other figure studies in this sketchbook, see under folio 1 verso (D22324).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.186–7 no.333, pl.333 (colour)
2
Wilton 1989, p.21.
3
Warrell 2003, p.23.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Head of a Woman in a Bonnet or Mob Cap c.1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, 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-the-head-of-a-woman-in-a-bonnet-or-mob-cap-r1148492, accessed 20 April 2024.