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

It has been proposed that the sequence between folios 1 recto and 12 verso (D28874–D28886) ‘form a series of studies narrating an erotic adventure’ as distinct from other ‘studies on similar themes throughout the book’.1 There may be a case for extending or shortening this range slightly – Raphael Rosenberg has suggested that it ends at folio 11 recto (D28885),2 after the throes of passion – but in principle this seems likely, as some of the scenes are more conventionally pictorial and carefully defined by drawing with the brush (albeit sometimes sexually explicit) than the often rather rough, undeveloped washes later on. Jack Lindsay has imagined them as ‘the record of an episode at an inn (on the Rhine, perhaps). A set of delightful little paintings show a servant-girl undressing, a couple tumbling in the large bed, compositions derived from their embraces, and what are almost pure effects of colour and light derived from the experience.’3

Whatever Turner’s overall idea may have been, here the man and woman are fully entwined in a curtained bed, and anatomical accuracy gives way to a dynamic flurry of limbs, their movement emphasised by both wash and pencil outlines in a tangle of movement to the extent that their heads and upper bodies become a blur; Gerald Wilkinson described the subject as ‘neither well-conceived nor well drawn.’4

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

Verso:

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