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 Naked Woman Reclining c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Woman Reclining’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Woman Reclining c.1834–6
D28912
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 25
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, a naked woman is shown reclining to the right within a shadowy curtained bed. She seems to rest her chin in her left hand, and her right arm is drawn back behind her head.
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:
The unaccessioned, blank recto is numbered in red ink ‘25’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 25’; it bears slight watercolour offsetting from folio 24 verso (D28910). There is quite extensive offsetting from the present page to the unaccessioned recto of folio 26 opposite (its verso being D28914).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Curtained Bed, with a Naked Woman Reclining 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-naked-woman-reclining-r1149000, accessed 25 April 2024.