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

As Ann Chumbley and Ian Warrell have noted, this nude study ‘leaves little doubt that its motive was erotic, the intention being made overt in the directness with which Turner has emphasised the genital area with a bold slash of red.’1 Other parts of the figure are outlined over the initial washes, and there is perhaps a suggestion of a setting of bedclothes and curtains. The studies on folios 53 verso and 55 verso (D28867, D28871) each show the same or a similar pose from a different angle (this being the most explicit), and they were perhaps made from life on the same occasion (perhaps, as Ian Warrell has suggested, in an academic Life Class),2 as opposed to the many apparently imaginative bedroom figure scenes elsewhere in this book.

For a discussion of the improvisatory and often erotic nature of the watercolour studies making up most of this sketchbook, see the Introduction.

Although the nude study on folio 44 verso (D28850; Turner Bequest CCXCI b 44a) is the only page reproduced in the catalogue for contemporary artist Tracey Emin’s 2012 Margate exhibition,3 Tate records indicate that the present page was the one exhibited among comparative works by other artists on that occasion.

There is a slight continuation or offsetting of watercolour from here to the unaccessioned recto of folio 55 (its verso being D28871). The unaccessioned recto of the present leaf is inscribed in red ink ‘54’ and stamped ‘CCXCI(b) – 54’; it is otherwise blank except for a slight watercolour continuation from folio 53 verso (D28867).