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 26 Verso:
?A Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28914
Turner Bequest CCXCI c 26
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, this very broad arrangement of washes is identifiable as a curtained bed, perhaps with a pale figure or figures within, only by comparison with more developed examples on adjacent pages.
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 ‘26’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(c) – 26’; it bears considerable watercolour offsetting from folio 25 verso (D28912). There is some offsetting from the present page onto the unaccessioned recto of folio 27 opposite (its verso being D28916), particularly near the gutter.

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-r1149001, accessed 16 April 2024.