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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Cowes Regatta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Back View of a Woman Leaning on a Support 1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Back View of a Woman Leaning on a Support’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
A Back View of a Woman Leaning on a Support 1827
D18007
Turner Bequest CCVII 10
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 100 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘10’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCVII – 10’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This rapid study has the air of observation from life, and perhaps shows a woman guest at East Cowes Castle, sinuously twisting while languidly leaning, perhaps against a table or piano-type instrument. There is a slight, similar profile to the right of the figure, either as another attempt at the pose or possibly to indicate a second figure conversing with the first. The attitude and potential subject are comparable those in a painting now dated to about 1835 and called Music Party, East Cowes Castle (Tate N03350).1 See also the gouaches of Music in the Library, tentatively associated with Turner’s stay at the castle (Tate D22690, D22705; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 28, 43).
Compare the equally appreciative sketch of a woman outdoors on folio 58 recto (D18101). For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the sketchbook Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.281–2 no.447, pl.448.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Back View of a Woman Leaning on a Support 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-back-view-of-a-woman-leaning-on-a-support-r1183495, accessed 19 May 2024.