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 > Fishing at the Weir Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Dark Interior with a Seated Figure, or a Wooded Landscape with a Figure Running c.1834-6

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Dark Interior with a Seated Figure, or a Wooded Landscape with a Figure Running’ c.1834-6
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Verso:
?A Dark Interior with a Seated Figure, or a Wooded Landscape with a Figure Running c.1834–6
D27739
Turner Bequest CCLXXXI 8a
Watercolour on white wove paper, 79 x 101 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As set out in the Introduction, numerous pages in the first third of this sketchbook have had rough watercolour washes applied, which have then been worked into compositions to varying degrees. There appears to be a pale figure here, with naked limbs and an arcing back, running headlong to the left if read with the page turned horizontally. Raphael Rosenberg has suggested this page and folio 9 recto opposite (D27740) form an erotic scene in which the ‘pursuit of a naked figure from left to right could possibly indicate Apollo and Daphne’,1 in the story from Greek mythology, although quite where Apollo might be indicated is unclear. Turner exhibited a painting of the Story of Apollo and Daphne in 1837 (Tate N00520),2 but the composition is unrelated.
More prosaically, Ian Warrell has suggested that this page shows instead ‘what looks like a seated figure’,3 presumably interpreting the image with the page turned vertically; other wash studies here seem to indicate figures in darkened bedrooms, so this too is a possibility.

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
Rosenberg 2007, p.117 (present author’s translation).
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.220–1 no.369, pl.371.
3
Warrell 2003, p.28.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Dark Interior with a Seated Figure, or a Wooded Landscape with a Figure Running c.1834–6 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-with-a-seated-figure-or-a-wooded-landscape-r1149103, accessed 07 July 2024.