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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Erotica and Improvisations c.1834-6 > Colour Studies (2) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Curtained Bed, with Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
?A Curtained Bed, with Figures c.1834–6
D28898
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 18
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the loose washes here probably indicate the setting of a curtained bed, possibly with a suggestion of a pale figure or figures within.
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
Technical notes:
There is slight offsetting of watercolour in the gutter here to the unaccessioned recto of folio 19 opposite (its verso being D28900). The unaccessioned, blank recto of the present leaf is numbered in red ink ‘18’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 18’.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with Figures c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, 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-a-curtained-bed-with-figures-r1148993, accessed 26 April 2024.