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 a Figure or Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28910
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 24
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 very loosely defined setting appears to be a curtained bed,1 as so often in this book, with the dappled washes suggesting light falling on a pale figure or figures within. The dark shape at the bottom right seems to suggest the shadow of an approaching figure.
For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.
1
See Rosenberg 2007, pp.117, 127.
Technical notes:
The unaccessioned, blank recto is numbered in red ink ‘24’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 24’; it bears some watercolour offsetting from folio 23 verso (D28908), particularly near the gutter. There is some offsetting from the present page on the unaccessioned recto of folio 25 opposite (its verso being D28912).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or 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-a-figure-or-figures-r1148999, accessed 26 April 2024.