Joseph Mallord William Turner Landscape Studies; a ?Reclining Female Nude ?1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 70 Verso:
Landscape Studies; a ?Reclining Female Nude ?1830
D22458
Turner Bequest CCXL 70a
Turner Bequest CCXL 70a
Pencil on white wove paper, 68 x 110 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Cyp’ top left
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Cyp’ top left
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.740, CCXL 70a, as ‘Nude female figure ; also small view,–“Cyp.”’.
1966
Jack Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work: A Critical Biography, London 1966, p.226 note 25.
2001
Alfred (Fred) Bachrach, ‘Cuyp, Aelbert (1620–91)’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.69, as ‘CCXLI: 70a’.
2003
Ian Warrell, ‘Exploring the “Dark Side”: Ruskin and the Problem of Turner’s Erotica’, with ‘A Checklist of Erotic Sketches in the Turner Bequest’, British Art Journal, vol.4, no.1, Spring 2003, p.23.
At the top left, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, is a small landscape study framed by pencil lines. It appears to show a wooded landscape with a structure including a vertical feature, which is too slight to relate with any certainty to the 1830 view of the Eleanor Cross monument at Hardingstone, Northamptonshire on folio 71 recto opposite (D22459). As Finberg documented in the index to his 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory, and as Jack Lindsay and Fred Bachrach have subsequently noted, Turner’s ‘Cyp’ is one of several such notes scattered through his sketchbooks referring to Aelbert Cuyp (sic; 1620–1691), the renowned Dutch landscape painter who was an important influence;1 presumably some aspect of form, colour or light in this scene evoked his work. There appears to be another very slight landscape study at the top right, comprising no more than a couple of wavy lines.
As Ian Warrell notes, it is unclear whether this study of a nude woman – probably reclining across the width of the page with her arms behind her head but possibly standing, assuming the page was turned vertically – and another on folio 1 verso (D22324) are ‘formal or more improvised studies’.2 There is a perhaps related inscription above another figure drawing on folio 72 recto (D22461).
For other figure studies in this sketchbook, see under D22324.
Matthew Imms
August 2013
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Landscape Studies; a ?Reclining Female Nude ?1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www