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 (1) Sketchbook [Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Recto:
?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28831
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 32
Watercolour on white wove paper, 77 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘32’ bottom right (smudged)
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(b) – 32’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There seems to be a dark interior or curtained bed here, with a pale figure or figures reclining towards the left, but the composition is hardly developed beyond the original washes, which effectively form a reversed image on folio 31 verso opposite (D28829), one page showing the offset of the other. Raphael Rosenberg has given this as an example of Klecksography, or drawings generated by random smudging, starting from a sort of proto-Rorschach mirror image, in this case reading both pages as images of figures reclining on their elbows1 (see the overall Introduction to the present grouping).
For a wider discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see elsewhere in the Introduction.
1
See Rosenberg 2007, pp.126–7, 328 note 52.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight offsetting of watercolour to or from folio 33 recto opposite (unaccessioned; the verso is D28832).

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Dark Interior or 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-dark-interior-or-curtained-bed-with-a-figure-or-figures-r1149059, accessed 19 September 2024.