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 25 Recto:
?A Dark Interior or Curtained Bed, with a Figure or Figures c.1834–6
D28818
Turner Bequest CCXCI b 25
Watercolour on white wove paper, 77 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI(b) – 25’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This loosely washed page suggests dark bed curtains on the left, with a pale shape beyond which may be a figure or figures. Some of the forms of the initial washes were offset to or from folio 24 verso opposite (D28816), and Raphael Rosenberg has given this as an example of Klecksography, or drawings generated by random smudging, in this case starting from a sort of proto-Rorschach mirror image, perhaps generated unintentionally1 (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.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

1
See Rosenberg 2007, p.126.

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-r1149047, accessed 22 November 2024.